Mental illnesses and chronic illnesses are disabilities. You don't have to call yourself disabled if it doesn't feel right to you but we have shared community, shared history, shared injustice & a shared fight.

The demarcations around gatekeeping disability are largely bc of capitalism, welfare cuts & crap we've internalised abt disability as worst case scenario. Disability isn't just about suffering or physical abnormality.

We all navigate a world not built for us. Sometimes that's stairs and sometimes it's overpriced therapy, inaccessible healthcare, lack of support in education and work, stigma, criminalisation, institutionalisation, violence.

In the 19th c lunatic asylums had 4 main categories of pathology: mania, melancholia, dementia, & congenital idiocy.

There was no distinction between mental illness, intellectual disability, TBI/ABI, neurological disability etc. The distinction was curable/incurable.

The lie of devolution is that shutting down the asylums transferred their populations to prisons.

That's not quite true. But it's true that disabled people (esp First Nations & racialised disabled people) are over-incarcerated & disproportionately targeted by cop violence.

"As many as 95 per cent of First Nations people who appear in court charged with a criminal offence have an intellectual disability, cognitive impairment or a mental illness." https://www.youngwitness.com.au/story/7067076/concern-over-disability-prison-statistics/

You can be denied permanent residency in Aus if you're disabled/considered a burden on the healthcare system.

Migration discrimination doesn't make distinctions between physical/intellectual/sensory disability & mental illness.

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Completed_Inquiries/mig/disability/chapter3

If you feel like you're "not disabled enough" to use the word, please examine where that's coming from, bc according to the state generally it's "not disabled enough to receive supports", not "not disabled enough to be discriminated against".