As I understand it, in the Freudian typology most psychiatry still adheres to, you have three levels of mental illness: Neurosis, Character Disorder, and Psychosis.
Neurosis is, as one example, the way Woody Allen presents himself (although I would suspect he is in reality what they call an Anti-Social Personality Disorder, or sociopath). Psychosis is most obviously Schizophrenia, although I do believe true Bipolar Disorder is listed here too. It is certainly medicated as what amounts to a neurochemical disorder.
In the middle you have Borderline Personality Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (and perhaps others I have forgotten).
What we see in the streets with the REEE gang is literally, clinically, a form of mental illness. It is certainly a failure of basic psychological maturation, but it is in my view in most cases worse than a prolonged adolescence. People reach middle and even old age like this. It’s the guy with gray hair ponytail who’s always angry about something, and who flies into fits at random intervals.
And people misuse this term “Bipolar”. They use it when someone flies into a rage over nothing. That’s not bipolar, that BPD, or so I understand it.
BPD, at root, is a profound, existential level feeling of inferiority and worthlessness. And what else could be built by people who get praise for nothing their whole lives, who live easy, worthless lives, and who still have to find some way to justify their existence?
You cannot separate the ideas on parenting, and on social responsibility, from what has emerged nationally politically. Social responsibility used to be a sense of accountability to those around you, to your family, your friends, your community, your country. It has devolved into voting for one party, and shouting at everyone who disagrees with you politically.
The whole thing is sick. It makes me feel a bit better to give a better name to it, but it also makes me wonder how we ever get sanity back, when this insanity is doing much of the defining of what constitutes sanity.