It's All In Your Head

onlinecounsellingcollege:

Mental illness refers to all of the diagnosable mental disorders. They are characterized by abnormalities in thinking, feelings, or behaviors.

Some of the most common types of mental illness include anxiety, depressive, behavioral, and substance-abuse disorders. Examples of anxiety disorders include phobia, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive worry to the point of interfering with the sufferer’s ability to function. Examples of anxiety disorders include the following:

·         Phobias: involve severe, irrational fear of a thing or situation. Examples of phobias include fear of heights (acrophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), and of venturing away from home ( agoraphobia).

·         Social anxiety disorder is the fear of being in social situations or feeling scrutinized, like when speaking in public.

·         Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) tends to result in the person either worrying excessively about many aspects of their life (like about money, family members, the future) or having a free-floating anxiety that is otherwise hard to describe. GAD is quite common, affecting about 10% of the population.

·         Panic disorder is characterized by recurring episodes of sudden, severe, debilitating anxiety (panic) attacks that are immobilizing. Those episodes usually include symptoms like racing heart beat, shortness of breath, stomach upset, and trouble thinking. In order to be diagnosed as having panic disorder, the person must also either worry about having another attack or about what the attack means (for example, wondering if the symptoms of panic indicate they are having a heart attack).

Behavioral disorders (like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], oppositional defiant disorder, or conduct disorder) are characterized by problems conforming to the tenets of acceptable behavior. The most common behavior disorder is ADHD; this condition includes symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity. While it used to be considered primarily a disorder of boys, it is now understood to be just as likely to occur in girls and that it can persist into adulthood in about half of children with ADHD.

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s dementia, is characterized by a problem with thinking, involving both memory problems and other forms of thinking. These are also known as cognitive problems and include difficulties with language or with identifying or recognizing things despite having no medical cause for these issues such as stroke or a brain tumour.

Depressive disorders involve feelings of sadness that interfere with the individual’s ability to function or, as with adjustment disorder, persist longer than most people experience in reaction to a particular life stressor. Examples of depressive disorders include the following:

·         Major depression involves the sufferer feeling depressed most days and for most of each day for at least two weeks in a row. Along with sadness, the individual with major depression experiences a number of other associated symptoms, like irritability, loss of motivation or interest in activities they usually enjoy, hopelessness, and increased or decreased sleep, appetite, and/or weight. The person might also exhibit thoughts, plans, or attempts to harm themselves. Women with postpartum depression tend to experience many of the above symptoms for weeks to months after giving birth.

·         Dysthymia sufferers experience depression and milder levels of the symptoms of major depression. In dysthymia, the symptoms are fairly consistent for more than two years in adults and one year in children and adolescents.

·         Bipolar disorder, also called manic depression, is a mental illness that is characterized by severe mood swings, repeated episodes of depression, and at least one episode of mania in the person’s lifetime.

Substance use disorders, like substance abuse and substance dependence, involve the use of a substance that interferes with the social, emotional, physical, educational, or vocational functioning of the person using it. These disorders afflict millions of people and a variety of legal (for example, alcohol and inhalants like household cleaners) and/or illegal (for example, cocaine, Ecstasy, and opiates) substances may be involved.

Source: http://www.medicinenet.com/mental_health_psychology/page2.htm#illness

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