You've completely missed the point (Score 1)

What the Surgeon General was trying to say--and what should have been more well taken than it was--is that mental disorders are far more physical than most people think. As another poster pointed out (in another thread), and as the Surgeon General himself pointed out in an interview, you don't tell a diabetic to just go walk it off, and to pick herself up and get over it. That's ridiculous. Diabetes is a specific kind of chemical imbalance, and so are many "mental" disorders. Instead of dismissing these people as "nuts" maybe we should look into treatment. Depression is the classic example. I heard a report on NPR that pointed out that depression was far more physical than many people think. They cited the example of a "silent stroke" (a stroke that doesn't cause you to colapse in pain, or severe brain damage or death, but may still cause some "light" damage to your brain nonetheless). They have a tendency to cause depression. But it has absolutely nothing to do with a person's situation. It may be the result of a fat-rich diet. This is (sometimes) treatable with medication. The fact is this: the condition of your body may affect your behavior, perhaps in dramatic ways. It most definitely does not mean you're nuts. What it means is that the condition of your body causing this probably needs to be addressed, and when it is your behavior may very well change. This connection is not very well understood, even by doctors. This, essentially, is the motivation behind this report, according to the Surgeon General himself (in an interview I heard).

I heard another interesting report on NPR (more people should listen to NPR--it's a great source of news. No I don't work for an NPR station :) that is somewhat relevant was about stress, and specifically about a book entitled something like Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. The idea was that stress is a physical response to, say, running for your life (or chasing down your lunch), and in almost every other animal doesn't last more than a few seconds. But in humans, we get it sitting down at the desk, we feel it for extended periods of time. It's extremely physical in nature and has very physical consequences (some of them rather dramatic). This message is very similar, I think, to what the Surgeon General was saying (if on a slightly different, and more specific, topic).