Mental Illness- Definition, Causes, Symptoms & Treatment

Many people occasionally suffer from mental health issues, including behavioural and emotional disturbance. Unfortunately, it can turn into illnesses through continuous symptoms, stressing and affecting your functioning ability.

Here are some essential details on mental illness that can assist you to knock it down before it becomes predominant.

The definition of mental illness is that it is a disorder in thinking, feeling and behaviour that affects your mind’s ability to function. Medical experts also call it a mental or psychiatric disorder that includes a range of mental health conditions.

Such illnesses can impact your daily life, including your profession, study and personal relationships. Therefore, psychiatrists and counsellors are constantly endeavouring to convince people to open up and treat it as a medical issue.

Below are some significant and predominant mental disorders that mental health experts have diagnosed so far:

1. Bipolar and Related Disorders

It is also known as manic depression, which causes unpredictable and drastic changes in behaviour. It includes hypomania or mania and severe depression.

2. Anxiety Disorders

It is a group of disorders that signifies fear or anxiety in you. Additionally, it causes physical signs such as faster heartbeat, breathing problems and dizziness.

3. Dissociative Disorders

Such mental illness causes spontaneous detachment from emotions, memories, consciousness, perceptions, and behaviours. Often it can disconnect people from their identity.

4. Disruptive Impulse-Control and Conduct Disorders

It is a group of disorders regarding self-control issues on feelings and behaviours. Kleptomania and ODD are examples of such disorders.

5. Depressive Disorders

This disorder group creates deep sorrow, void and irritable mood that restricts thinking or functioning capacity. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a significant example of such depressive disorder.

6. Feeding and Eating Disorder

This mental illness represents a tenacious irregularity in eating patterns, leading to poor mental and physical health.

7. Neurodevelopmental Disorders

These disorders become evident at the early phase of child development. These lead to a disability of cohesive functioning. ADHD and Alzheimer's disease are significant examples.

8. Personality Disorders

These disorders signify inflexibility in behaviour that causes disability and distress. Mental health experts have recognised 10 different types of personality disorders so far.

9. Schizophrenic Disorders

This group of disorders includes several types of abnormality in behaviour. Some significant examples are hallucinations, disorganised thinking, delusions, negative symptoms and abnormal motor behaviour.

10. Sleep-Wake Disorders

These disorders involve sleeping patterns that can either be abnormally falling asleep or staying awake. Some common sleep-wake diseases are narcolepsy and insomnia.

11. Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

This group consists of disorders that occur from any stressful or traumatic event. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the most common example.

12. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

OCD causes an individual to develop compulsive behaviours due to excessive thoughts and fears, which might interfere with daily activities and cause distress.

Though indications may vary upon several factors, below are some general symptoms of mental illness:

• Deep sorrow or distress
• Excessive violence, anger or hostility
• Extreme fear, tension, worry or remorse
• Confusion or reduction in thinking and concentrating ability
• Significant fatigue or lack of energy
• Sleeping problem
• Suicidal tendency
• Extreme mood swings 
• Detachment from social activities
• Inability to grapple with daily issues and stress
• Lack of understanding of situations
• Hallucination or delusion

Mental illnesses occur from these 4 significant factors as follows:

Environmental Vulnerability

Exposure to toxic chemicals, stressors or substances causing inflammation in a mothers’ womb causes mental illness. For instance, drinking alcohol, consuming drugs or other harmful substances while pregnant causes psychiatric disorders in a child.

Hereditary Traits

Many mental problems are hereditary for running similar genetic components. Therefore, people with relatives having severe mental disorders have high chances of growing such diseases.

Biological Reasons

Mental disorders often develop from a disproportion in neurotransmitters. These are natural chemicals that act as messengers in the human brain. An imbalance in their occurrence can lead to mental disorders.

Real-life Experience

Many examples showed that experiencing a stressful or traumatising event in life can cause psychiatric disorders. PTSD is a common example of such a disorder. Also, frequent change in primary caretakers in early childhood causes attachment disorders.

People are at serious risk of mental illness if they have the following factors:

• History of mental disorder within blood relations
• Other persisting chronic medical illness
• Continuous stress in daily life
• Experience of traumatic incidents
• Brain damage due to severe injury
• History of childhood abuse or avoidance
• Addiction to toxic substances like alcohol or drugs

The diagnosis of mental illness primarily involves physical and psychological tests.

Physical Examinations

The physical test involves examinations of visible symptoms such as breathing issues, heartbeat rate, anxiety level, dizziness etc. Several diseases often have similar symptoms that can mislead the treatment.

For instance, doctors can identify rapid heartbeat as a cardiac issue, which can occur due to anxiety issues. Therefore, a thorough examination of symptoms is essential.

Psychological Analysis

A mental health expert, such as a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist, performs evaluations with several questions. This questionnaire may include symptoms, family and friends history, childhood experiences etc.

They sometimes also use several tools to find out the exact disorder since the symptoms may overlap in most cases.

If you wonder how to cure mental illness, remember that it is not entirely curable. But several medical experts have been successfully treating mental disorders to the maximum. However, reducing the symptoms and mitigating the disorder depends mainly on an individual level.

The most effective forms of treatment are psychotherapy and medication. In some cases, only psychotherapy can reduce the symptoms. On the other hand, some signs or levels may require specific medication.

Also, sometimes mild medication shows significant results while others may need thorough medication. Some treatment processes may include alternative and complementary therapies for specific conditions. Moreover, treatments may require experimentation and trial and error before professionals figure out the utmost suitable one.

Follow the pointers mentioned below to prevent medical disorders:

• Lead a healthy life without any bad habits.
• Take proper care of yourself by sleeping well, eating properly and being active.
• Spend enough time with family, friends or in social activities.
• Reach out and open up while experiencing stress or sorrow.
• Never avoid any signs and get routine checkups.

Here was a brief overview of mental illnesses. Note that it is a very vast concept, and the above details do not cover it entirely. This is why it is always safe to reach out to a professional instead of conducting self-diagnosis, if you or a loved one is experiencing any discomforting signs of the same.