Ah ok, this was just a misunderstanding of terminology. &quot;Psychopath&quot; in English has a specific meaning having to do with lack of empathy and conscience, etc.—not mental illness in general. (It&#x27;s perhaps confusing because &quot;psychopathology&quot; is quite different from &quot;psychopathy&quot; and does mean mental illness in general.) Colloquially, to call someone a psychopath is to condemn them harshly—even though technically it&#x27;s an illness, though not everyone believes this—while to say that they&#x27;re mentally ill is more neutral and in context can be sympathetic.<p>Your English is either native or extremely close to native, so it didn&#x27;t cross my mind at all that you didn&#x27;t mean the word as an insult, especially since some HN users throw it around too freely. My apologies for lumping you in with that!