I completely agree with your overall analysis, as well as the main point of the original article. The one thing I would add or clarify is that even the phrase "mental disorder" may not be the best way to refer to this class of symptoms/behaviors. I believe that "mental injury" would be both more accurate, and more conducive to healing.

A substantial portion of the things we refer to as "mental illness" are the after-effects of trauma. When you break your leg and you can't walk for 6 months afterwards, people don't say you have a "leg illness". It's not some unspecified thing which caused your leg to stop performing like most people's legs. It's a fracture. If set properly and given time to heal, it will resume normal functioning. If it's never set, or if it gets reinjured, it may lead to a permanent disability.

Minds can be broken as well. Any one who has ever experienced an abusive relationship knows this. Survivors of child abuse know this. A "mental fracture" isn't primarily physical, like a fracture of the leg, but it has a similar effect in terms of impairing the organ to perform its role correctly.

But mental injuries can be "set" and healed, just like physical ones. Perhaps not 100%, perhaps there will always be scar tissue or some version of impaired mobility where the injury occurred. But injuries heal with time, given proper care.

I am aware that this concept is fairly at odds with the western conception of mental health with its myriad disorders, all of which are unexplained and presumably lifelong diseases. I attribute this entire weird world of DSM pseudoscience with its gargantuan and ever-growing list of labels to the massive social pressure against dealing with the actual problem of trauma and abuse.

Correctly diagnosing someone with a "mental injury resulting from trauma/abuse" would lead to some extremely difficult conversations, which most people (even the ones experiencing the abuse) would prefer not to have.