Many of my friends suffer from severe mental illnesses — I've cared for them, seen the inside of a psychiatric facility, and spoken extensively to psychiatrists and therapists. The root of most mental illness has a common theme, and can be clearly seen if you visit your neighborhood mental health clinic to see the letters that patients have written. They're often encouraged to write poetry, and the poems are often very beautiful: they talk about how they constantly feel attacked by the outside world and develop a sense of low self-worth, which handicaps their day-to-day function; there is unfailingly a message of hope that they will get better soon. The root cause is a combination of biological factors, coupled with a maladjusted childhood. That said, mental illness could manifest in a completely different way, in which case the patient is filled with hate and anger and turns violent, but the root is the same low self-worth, along with the same maladjusted childhood factor — this manifestation is relatively rare, and the patients are much harder to care for, as they project a grandiose sense of self-worth and outsized confidence. This class of patients does not have handicapped day-to-day function in the same way as the other class, and are often too proud to seek help — the pride is however, a projection, and they're often quite miserable in private. They're nevertheless no less sick, and no less deserving of our help. As society, we have largely failed to identify this class of patients, and some of them are present as high-functioning public figures today: Pete Hegseth, who recently wanted to live-stream executions, is a clear example, and Nigel Farage is a less clear example. They might be projecting the image of a macho man, but all it takes is a visit to your neighborhood mental health clinic to clearly see them as the marshmallows that they are.