According to WHO (World Health Organization), mental health is psychological, social, and emotional wellness. Anyone with mental health achieves his abilities, works productively, is active in the community, and copes with life stress.
Mental health helps to achieve individual and collective ability. However, modern life has brought numerous personality or psychological factors that increase vulnerability to mental illness. Mental illness is any health condition that causes a change in emotion, behavior, thinking, or a combination. The number of people with mental challenges around the world is growing. Below are the prevalent mental illnesses.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a feeling of excessive worry or nervousness that causes persistent fear about the outcome of everyday situations. Some individuals, in addition to anxiety, also suffer from depression. Many issues are responsible for causing anxiety disorders. They include genetics, life events, and brain chemistry. Treatment options are in the form of medication and psychotherapy to control the symptoms. Unfortunately, just around 36% of the people with anxiety disorders seek and access medical help.
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Depression
Depression is a mood disorder causing a feeling of dejection over a long period. A long time depiction is that too few or many brain chemicals, particularly serotonin, cause depression. Other possible causes of depression are stressful life events, medical problems, medications, and brain inability to regulate mood. Depression affects many people more than other mental illnesses. Around 300 million people in the world experience some form of depression.
Low esteem, guilt, loss of concentration, exhausting, change in eating habits, and difficulty in falling asleep are some of the signs that characterize depression. Depression can keep recurring or last long to interfere with an ability to function normally in life. Depression affects work, school, and relationships. The condition can, in a severe state, cause suicidal thoughts and action. The three options to treat are antidepressant therapy, psychotherapy, and behavioral therapy.
Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses
Schizophrenia is a disorder that makes a person to interpret things abnormally, affecting the ability to think, act, and feel different from reality. People with Schizophrenia might experience a combination of delusion, hallucination, uncontrollable behavior, and thinking. The symptoms impair daily functioning and disable someone from performing some activities.
Disorganization when making a speech or participating in other activities and a decreased involvement in daily activities are signs of Schizophrenia. A victim might also experience thoughts or experiences that deviate from reality, losing concentration and memory.
The exact cause is not clear, but research points to a combination of psychological, physical, genetic, and environmental factors. Some people are just more prone, and psychotic episodes can occur after experiencing an emotional or stressful life event. Treatment of Schizophrenia is long-lasting, often requiring medications and psychotherapy. Patients also require coordinated specialty care.
Bipolar Affective Disorder
This condition causes extreme mood swings, including emotional lows (depression). It also causes a high called mania or hypomania. Some people call this mental disorder manic depression. More than 60 million people across the world live with bipolar disorder.
Symptoms vary depending on if someone is experiencing lows or highs. Manic episodes make someone have an irritable or elevated mood, lack of sleep, hyperactivity, and self-esteem inflation. Hypomania can cause the same symptoms, but they are less severe. The disorder comes with sadness, little energy, hopelessness, and trouble falling asleep. There is no single known cause of bipolar affective disorder as triggers are a mixture of genetic, environmental, and neurochemical factors. The combinations of causes make the illness progress. Psychological support and medication are the two methods to treat bipolar disorder.
Dementia
Dementia is a progressive or chronic deterioration of the cognitive function faster than normal aging. It is impacting close to 50 million people around the globe. The decline in cognitive activity affects memory, thinking, comprehension, language, and calculation. Diseases that impact brain function lead to dementia. The condition does not have a cure, but patients get palliative treatments to reduce suffering and confusion.
Mental illnesses take many forms and can affect anyone. It is essential to be on the lookout for symptoms of mental illness.
