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Egenis seminar series. There is an on-going debate surrounding different answers to the question ?€?What is mental illness??€? My aim in this paper is not to engage directly with this debate, but to see the consequences of adopting a form of expressivism with regards to the attribution of mental illness. In other words, I am (at least initially) retreating from the contested ground about what mental illness might be, to an exploration of what attributing mental illness might do. I argue that calling someone mentally ill expresses (in a sense that I will clarify) certain evaluative attitudes (in a sense that I will clarify). I end by investigating consequences of this view for related issues, including: cultural relativism, the nature of illness more generally, and, returning to the more traditional debate, a potential answer to what mental illness might actually be.