Why is mental pain considered to be more suspect than physical pain?

I was thinking about how everyone thinks that drugs that help with physical pain or physical illness are a wonder; whereas when people seek to address mental pain on their own, they are seen as hedonic, out of control lushes.

When most people think about why someone takes drugs or drinks or has a lot of sex in order to feel better, they draw the conclusion that that person is a self-indulgent hedonist who cares only about their own pleasure. Most, I believe, assume the worst motives for those who seek to feel pleasure. Yet, when someone breaks a leg, and tries a pain-killer to make them feel better, there is no opprobrium.

The idea that people may be “self-medicating” in order to cover some serious mental or emotional pain or depression probably never occurs to most people. Even if it did, the method for dealing with that pain seems almost universally considered to be lazy. It demonstrates a lack of strength and self-discipline, most people probably think.

Mental illness can not be seen, obviously, so I suppose that makes people mistrust those who claim to suffer from it. But I think there must be something deeper going on. People don’t just scorn those who are addicts, they try to take away their pain killers. It’s as if some people should just suffer if they can’t deal with mental pain some other way.

It seems like there is little sympathy for people who experience mental pain, except if they follow medically prescribed methods for diagnosing and dealing with it. They are told to kick the habit or go to jail, and little effort is made to deal with the underlying pain that causes people to seek out addicting substances in the first place.

Seems to me like this is a plan that is guaranteed to fail. “Snap out of it” says that the pain doesn’t really exist. It says that the sufferer is self-indulgent. It is very rare that physical ailments are questioned the same way. Why is that?