Mental illness
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Mental illness is characterized by uncontrollable and unusual thoughts, feelings and actions. While almost everyone experiences mood swings or sometimes can find it hard to think clearly, people with mental illnesses have severe symptoms that damage their ability to function in everyday life. About 3% of Americans experience mental illnesses at some time in their lives.
Common layman's terms for mental illness are mental disorders, psychotic illnesses, psychiatric illnesses, neurosis, and nervous breakdowns, but these are not all medical terms. Insanity is a legal term referring to a state in which a person is so impaired or out of touch with reality that he or she cannot be held legally responsible for a crime.
History of Treating Mental Illness
In prehistoric times people believed that evil spirits caused mental illness. Doctors used to drill holes in skulls in an effort to release the demons causing the illness. In 400 BC, the Greek doctor Hippocrates was speculating that mental illness was an imbalance of four bodily fluids, including phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. By the 1500s, there were hospitals for the mentally ill, but patients were often beaten, kept in chains, and otherwise abused. By the late 1700s, treatment of the mentally ill had improved , but there were no medical interventions to help them. In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud came up with the idea of simply listening to them talk, and this idea developed into psychotherapy. By the 1950s, better medications along with psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy and other methods meant that for the first time more people were being cured than being admitted into mental hospitals.
Understanding of Mental Illness Today
Mental illness is still not completely understood, but the prevailing theory today is that a combination of genetics and environmental factors cause disturbances in the neurobiology of the brain. Doctors have to rule out medical conditions such as thyroid disorders, hormonal imbalances, brain tumors, head trauma, exposure to toxic chemicals, changes in blood sugar levels, and reactions to surgery before they can diagnose someone as mentally ill. Mental illness must be a persistent disturbance in daily functioning that is not due to such factors or to alcohol or drug impairments.
Types of Mental Illness
There are about 100 kinds of mental illness, but some of the main forms are disorders characterized by anxiety, psychosis, poor impulse control, problems with mood, substance abuse, and hypochondria. Certain mental illness can appear in childhood, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, eating disorders, and tics. In late adolescence and early adulthood, mood disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia can occur.
Anxiety disorders involve being fearful in everyday situations that normal people perceive as safe. Generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder are anxiety disorders.
Mood disorders can be depression and dysthymic disorder, which is persistent depression that lasts for two years or longer. Bipolar disorder is characterized by severe mood swings, including depression and mania or extreme excitement.
Impulse control disorders include pathological gambling, kleptomania, pyromania, and intermittent explosive disorder.
Somatoform disorders are characterized by constant physical complaints that have no basis in the body. Hypochondria is one form, as well as pain disorder and dysmorphic body disorder, characterized by obsessing about imaginary flaws in one's body.
Dissociative disorders can include a loss or change of identity and memory. Some people with dissociative disorders believe they have traveled to other places and assumed different identities there. Multiple personality disorder and amnesia are other kinds of dissociative disorders.
Personality disorders are characterized by a pattern of maladaptive behaviors. Kinds of personality disorders are paranoid, schizoid, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial, avoidant, dependent, and obsessive compulsive.
Substance abuse disorders characterized by an inability to stop using alcohol, drugs, other substances or certain activities even when such usage is damaging one's life, and even when one wants to quit doing so. Substance abuse disorders are considered mental illnesses.
