Rationality In Mental Illness

No one is rational or morally right or in any way legitimized in allowing their depression, their anxiety, their bipolar disorder, or any other such condition to dictate their worldview or to deter them in carrying out their obligations.  It is one thing to have severe dementia to the point of not remembering anything past a moment or two, and this person is not irrational for never getting past the fundamental self-evidence of logical axioms and their own conscious existence.  It is another thing to have other mental illnesses/disorders that they use as an excuse to flee from reason, even if only on a selective, partial basis.

It might be more difficult for them to remain rational than it would be without their mental health struggles, certainly, but they do not have to make assumptions, they do not have to ignore familiar logical truths, and they do not have to selfishly mistreat others because of their mental state.  If they fail in any of these ways, it is their failure alone and not the fault of anything or anyone else.  Like everyone else, they have no excuse for not discovering at least the self-evidence of logical axioms and their own mind's existence.  This of course does not mean that those who fail do not have, in some ways, less outright irrationality than someone who does not have these obstacles to focus on and still fails.

I myself have periodic, intense existential depression, not that me relating or not relating to this is what makes any of these aforementioned truths real and knowable.  No one needs to experience such things to think of and realize logical necessities about a given thing like mental health.  Logical axioms are inherently true, and all else hinges on them by default.  It is impossible to be valid in ignoring them throughout one's life no matter one's mental health.  Yes, since they are true by intrinsic necessity and are epistemologically self-evident, even a person in psychosis or a dream could discover or acknowledge them.  Other things that follow from them or that would inevitably be governed by them are likewise not secondary to whether one feels fulfilled or stable.  No, it is the other way around.

In my case, existential depression is brought about by epistemological limitations, other mental health issues, and the way that life circumstances are complicated by this combination of variables, so it is ironically created in some ways because of philosophical seriousness rather than getting used as the supposed, contradictory justification for ignoring such things.  That would be contradictory because thinking that the unfortunate nature of one's life could legitimize resisting knowledge of the nature of reality obviously would entail relying on things that are being dismissed, as if reality is not higher than preferences anyway.  Personal struggles do not alter any foundational truths or anything else other than the fact that they make it so that one is struggling.

Emotionalism is still emotionalism no matter who engages in it or whatever universally irrelevant, invalid motivations they might have for it.  The mentally ill (short of someone with a truly hindering condition like the dementia I mentioned above) are no less capable of perfect rationality than they would have been apart from their psychological challenges or suffering.  In all contexts except for those involving extremely young children and those with the more intense conditions I have touched upon, there is no legitimate excuse for irrationalism and its manifestations of assumptions, hypocrisy, selfishness, and neglect of axioms and other truths.