Bruce Greyson might disagree with you.
Yes, it seems so.
In both his keynote talk as well as during the psychiatrist's panel discussion at last year's IANDS, he went into some detail about the differences between mental illness and spiritual experiences. His keynote isn't posted online, but the psychiatrist's panel is. Having a mental illness doesn't preclude one from having a spiritual experience, and vice versa, but they are separate issues.
Well, my focus was on "psychosis" and "schizophrenia" rather than "mental illness" in general, since those are the diagnoses that have been applied to me, so I have personal experience with them, and have also done some reading on them. From what I know about "bipolar disorder" though from a couple of friends who have had that diagnosis applied to them, I'd be fairly confident in also including that phenomenology in the category of "psychospiritual condition/emergency" rather than "mental illness". Beyond that, I can only speculate, but you can probably guess my hunch.
Too, Bruce seems in these videos to be most focussed on NDEs in particular rather than spiritual experiences in general. I wonder whether you know his definition of a spiritual experience? Perhaps this is more of a semantic difference than anything. Even in that case, though, I think there are good reasons to prefer the nomenclature of spirituality to that of psychiatry or "mental health".
Bruce and I would probably agree on the content of the inner experience, and the details of the external behaviour, of those diagnosed with "psychosis", "schizophrenia" or "bipolar disorder". Where we
might differ is on their nature and causality. Hopefully, I explained my view in enough detail in
the post a few back in this thread. Everything Bruce said in both videos in terms of the inner experience and the external behaviour of those diagnosed with "psychosis"/"schizophrenia" is compatible with my view that these are (generally)
negative spiritual experiences, just as NDEs are (generally)
positive spiritual experiences. I can only assume that either Bruce doesn't agree with me on their nature/causality, or that for some reason he simply prefers the nomenclature of psychiatry to that of spirituality (in which case, I'd like to know that reason, so that if I ever got an opportunity, I could try to change his preference!).
A couple of other quick points/observations:
"Psychosis" and "schizophrenia" are neither always, nor necessarily ultimately,
negative spiritual experiences. I've seen/read reports that sometimes, when those undergoing these experiences receive the right support or guidance in the right environment, the spiritual emergency turns out to have been more of an initiation into a healing role, or simply a wholer life. Two examples of this (one of which has already been posted in another thread, and the other of which has had a related article posted in another thread) are the generally positive outcomes for those experiencers who passed through
Soteria whilst it still existed (hat tip to Vortex for the vid), and the fortunate young American man who was
taken by Malidoma Somé to Africa to undergo a (modified) shamanic ritual. As you can read in that article, people with the phenomenology diagnosed in the West as "psychosis" and "schizophrenia", and "treated" on the psychiatric understanding that they have a "mental illness", are viewed very differently in traditional African societies: as being chosen messengers for spirits.
Also, some of Bruce's points in the panel video seemed too definitive, or otherwise inaccurate, to me: for example, not all of us who are diagnosed with "schizophrenia" lack interest in gaining insight into what's going on as he claimed we do; some of us keenly want to know.
P.S. If a moderator feels that this is off-topic and hijacking the thread, please feel free to move it.