Have you ever lived with someone with a mental illness? I definitely see the relationship with terrorism. Terrorism thrives on fear - "will they attack today?", "Will they use some horrible method of attack?", "Will I be able to handle it?", etc.
Living with someone with mental illness can strike fear into a person. "When I get home from work, will I get normal spouse, or lunatic spouse?", "Will I need to take my children away from this situation, or will we have a nice normal meal?", "Will I get fired for constantly having to leave work to deal with this shit, or will it calm down for long enough that I can accomplish some of my life goals?"
It can be very terrifying dealing with something like this, and frankly, I find the metaphor extremely apt. I understand your distaste of how the word is used in the media, but please understand that not all of us use these words lightly. These diseases really can be literally terrifying to the people around the disabled. It can literally feel like someone or something is torturing your loved ones when you see what happens to them.
That's mincing words. Being bipolar feels like an assault on my psyche that exists for no reason other than to make me miserable and to meticulously sabotage everything I do. I totally understand feeling like having a terrorist in your head, because it's a great way to describe how I feel sometimes.
In the title, the author is using a metaphor, which is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
And the contention here is that it's inappropriate (unless you mean to suggest that diseases are sentient or otherwise capable of intention to foment terror) and overplayed, and it ultimately corrodes the meaning of and devalues the word.
Living with someone with mental illness can strike fear into a person. "When I get home from work, will I get normal spouse, or lunatic spouse?", "Will I need to take my children away from this situation, or will we have a nice normal meal?", "Will I get fired for constantly having to leave work to deal with this shit, or will it calm down for long enough that I can accomplish some of my life goals?"
It can be very terrifying dealing with something like this, and frankly, I find the metaphor extremely apt. I understand your distaste of how the word is used in the media, but please understand that not all of us use these words lightly. These diseases really can be literally terrifying to the people around the disabled. It can literally feel like someone or something is torturing your loved ones when you see what happens to them.