19.3 – Mental Health Diseases and Disorders

Mental Disorders

A mental disorder is a condition or illness that causes disruptions with mental processes impacting how an individual functions.

Mental Disorders Signs and Symptoms

Mental disorders can affect adults and children. They are often chronic, growing progressively worse if not assessed, managed, or treated. Symptoms may begin in childhood or adolescence, including excessive, irrational fear or dread. Everyone is unique, and individuals’ signs and symptoms will interfere with their ability to cope and may impact others. Some of the symptoms that may be included in mental and behavioural health may include the following, which are defined.

Common Mental Health Disorders

• Mood disorders affect your emotional state, focusing on how you feel, from extreme sadness to extreme happiness.
• Substance and Addictive disorders: continued use of substances that affect the person in negative ways and, once addicted, lead to compulsive behaviours.
• Anxiety disorders occur when a person responds to something with fear or dread and has a severe stress response that may include various physical reactions, such as trouble focusing, irritability, rapid heat rate, and muscle discomfort.
• Personality disorders involve disruptive patterns of thinking, behaviour, and mood related to others.
• Behavioural disorders are described as disruptive patterns of conduct. Persistent and repetitive behaviours that impair a person’s functioning often cause distress in others around them.
• Eating disorders are complex. These conditions can be related to societal expectations, unrealistic role models, a warped image of themselves in the mirror, trauma, or fear of obesity, among other things.
• Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of conditions that have affected how the brain and nervous system develop. The disorder can cause changes in thinking, feeling, language, and physical abilities.
• Delusional disorders are conditions where the individual has repetitive false or fixed beliefs that are not factual.

Mood Disorders

Bipolar disorder is a manic-depressive disease that causes extreme shifts in a person’s mood and energy and impacts one’s ability to carry out activities of daily living (ADL). Bipolar disorder may be characterized by cycling mood changes between mania or hypomania and the severe lows of depression (IBPF, 2022).

Substance and Addictive Disorders

Alcoholism is chronic condition characterized by compulsive and excessive alcohol consumption.

Drug addiction is a condition that affects a person’s mood and behaviour, which leads to the inability to control the use of legal or illegal drug usage.

This list highlights terms of reference related to substance and addictive disorders:

• Intoxication means the process of putting poison in; the poison may include drugs or alcohol.
• Delirium Tremens (DT) are acute, seizure-like episodes that are sometimes even fatal. They are related to stopping excessive alcohol or drug after long periods of intake.
• Withdrawal is not as severe as DT, but it is still a state where the person is attempting to come down from having the drug or alcohol over a long time.
• Tolerance is when the person becomes accustomed to the drug or the alcohol, therefore, they need a higher amount. We see that with crystal meth, it is an extreme high and an extreme drop, therefore, the patient craves more.

Mania is also known as manic syndrome. It is a mental and behavioural condition characterized by an elevated state of arousal, such as excessive excitement, or frenzy. Associated with this condition are unmanaged impulses. A common impulse is kleptomania, the impulse to steal, or pyromania, the frenzy or impulse to set fires.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a form of depression that appears related to the fluctuations in the client’s exposure to natural sunlight. This occurs in countries where there is limited seasonal sunlight.
Suicide is the willful ending of one’s own life. There is no clear suicide type, meaning no one can predict who will take their life. Always seek medical attention when considering or discussing suicide.

Depression can be demonstrated in many different forms and extremes. When you look at the word depression, it means the process of feeling down:

• De- means down
• press means thought or emotion
• -ion means the process of
• The word impression would mean bringing forward or to boost the emotion or thought
• The word expression would mean the outward displaying the thought or the emotion
• The word oppression would be to keep others down

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is the state of feeling uneasiness, apprehension, worry or dread. It may be an involuntary or a reflexive reaction of the body to stress. Anxiety can be a typical stress reaction and can help a person deal with a tense situation, such as studying harder for an exam (Perotta, 2019).

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is anxiety which is not related to a specific situation; it is an uneasiness, apprehension, worry or dread reaction to various non-specific situations. Signs and symptoms may include nervousness, sweating, lightheadedness, dizziness, and palpitations (Perotta, 2019).

Panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder, often called panic attacks. It causes feelings of terror that occur suddenly and repeatedly without any warning. Clients with this disorder cannot predict when the attack will occur and may develop intense anxiety between episodes, worrying about when and where the next panic attack will occur. When having a panic attack, the client may feel sweaty, flushed, chilled, faint, weak, or dizzy. Their hands may feel tingly or numb. They may experience nausea, chest pain or a smothering sensation, or fear of impending doom and loss of control. The client may generally believe that they are having a heart attack or losing their mind, or are on the verge of death (Canada, 2022). 

Phobias are a condition of irrational fear. The person cannot rationalize the fear away. The client’s fear is real, even if it seems irrational to others. The clients can attend cognitive behavioural therapy to help them to manage the phobia.

Acrophobia is the irrational fear of heights:

• acro means height
• phobia means abnormal fear

Agoraphobia is the abnormal fear of the marketplace or leaving home:

• agora means marketplace
• phobia means abnormal fear

Claustrophobia is the abnormal fear of enclosed spaces:

• claustr/o means enclosed spaces
• phobia means the abnormal fear

Anthropophobia is a social phobia, thus an abnormal fear of man:

• anthrop/o means man
• phobia means abnormal fear

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs after a traumatic event. It is an extended emotional response with flashbacks, nightmares, and often insomnia.

Personality Disorders

Antisocial personality disorder pertains to behaviours that are against legal or social norms:

• anti means against
• socio means society
• -al means pertaining to
• dis means apart

Borderline personality disorder may exhibit impulsive, unpredictable, and inappropriate responses to a situation.

Dissocial personality disorder often looks at going against societal expectations. They disagree with social norms or obligations. They do not have empathy for others. They get frustrated easily. They blame others and will not change their behaviour.

Dissociative identity disorder is a condition where the person has two or more distinct personalities. It was historically and commonly known as the older term split personality disorder. Disassociation is a defence mechanism where normal mental processes separate from consciousness. With dissociative disorder, a severe disturbance or trauma causes changes in the client’s memory, consciousness, identity, and awareness of oneself and one’s environment (Canada, 2022).

Narcissistic personality disorder is where a person has an abnormal sense of self-importance.

Behavioural Disorders

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD is a syndrome where there are impulsive behaviours. A child with ADHD is not able to concentrate, as they have a very short attention span.

Oppositional defiant disorder ODD is a condition in which an individual may appear hostile, disobedient, aggressive, or defiant.

Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD) is a reoccurring preoccupation of an irresistible drive, such as checking locks, curling irons, skin picking, hoarding, or excessive hand washing. OCD often involves persistent, unwelcome thoughts or images or the urgent need to engage in certain rituals that the person cannot control. The rituals are performed to try to prevent or get rid of the compulsions (Canada, 2022).

Nymphomania is a condition of madness where a woman wants to achieve orgasm, whereas for a man, it is called satyriasis: a male’s uncontrollable sexual desire.

Philia is a condition of attraction or obsessive love. An example is paraphilia: an abnormal condition of being attracted to abnormal sexual perversions. Another example is pedophilia, where there is an obsessive sexual attraction to children.

Eating Disorders

Anorexia is a condition that is characterized as a relentless drive for thinness. As a medical term, it is translated to mean “without appetite.” This condition tends to be seen to occur more frequently in women.

• an- means without
• -orex means appetite
• -ia means condition.

Bulimia nervosa tends to occur higher in males. It is where a person binges on food and then vomits or uses high doses of laxatives (Udo & Grilo, 2019).

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an abnormal social interaction; it may impact a child’s communication. The child may have repetitive behaviours. The disorder varies from child to child.

Asperger’s disorder is a disorder that impacts social interaction without delay in language.

Delusional Disorders

Paranoia is inappropriate or suspicious behaviour in which one believes that somebody is invading their rights or has exaggerated feelings of persecution. The client may have highly exaggerated or unwarranted mistrust or suspiciousness.

Schizophrenia causes the patient to live within a fantasy world, where they have inappropriate thoughts which come out as behaviour. When you break down the word, schiz/o means split, and phrenia is a condition of the mind, however, that is not entirely true. Often with schizophrenia, the patient may have delusions or illusions. These may be increased within specific social situations. Schizophrenia is not caused by stress, but both conditions impact daily functioning (Valle, 2020).

Attribution

This page “Mental Health Diseases and Disorders” by Connie Stevens and Marie Rutherford is licensed under CC BY 4.0.