Mental disorders are diagnosed routinely in our days, and everyone knows a greater or lesser extent, which means depression, anxiety disorder, bulimia, and so on. However, some are more common than others, which causes those that are more prevalent to deserve an extra notch of attention.
Psychopathologies distress a great number of people. Specialists say that two in five people suffer or will suffer from some mental disorder during their life.
Psychological ailments, for example, worry or depression, maybe normal reactions to strenuous life situations and are often temporary. It is important not to pathologize what constitutes normal reactions to life events. At the same time, early identification of psychiatric conditions could have a positive effect on prognosis.
Mental disorders affect more people.
But what are the most common disorders? What are the disorders that affect a greater number of people?
Here is a brief explanation of the most common mental disorders and how they affect our daily lives.
1. Anxiety Disorders
The anxiety is a normal reaction of people in situations of stress and uncertainty. On the diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, several anxiety symptoms cause anguish or some degree of functional impairment in the life of the individual who suffers from it.
It can be difficult for a person with an anxiety disorder to perform in different areas of their life: family and social relationships, work, school, etc. There are different types of anxiety disorders:
2. Panic attack
A panic attack is the sudden, intense onset of fear or terror, often associated with feelings of impending death. Warning sign includes shortness of breath, palpitations, chest pain, and discomfort.
3. Phobic disorders
Numerous people confess that they are afraid of snakes or spiders, but they can endure that fear. Individuals with a phobia, on the other hand, are not able to tolerate that fear. They experience an irrational fear when they are in front of the phobic stimulus, be it a situation, an animal, or an object, and this usually ends in avoidance behavior.
Different phobic stimuli trigger this irrational fear: flying with an airplane, driving a vehicle, elevators, clowns, dentists, blood, storms, etc.
4. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder occurs when the person experiences a traumatic situation that has caused the individual to a psychological experience stressful, which can be devastating. Warning sign includes feelings of anger, nightmares, emotional fatigue or irritability, detachment from others, etc.
Often, the person will try to avoid situations or activities that bring back memories of the event that triggered the trauma.
5. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
In obsessive-compulsive disorder, the individual experiences thoughts, ideas, or disturbing images. It is an anxiety disorder, and therefore it is characterized by being associated with a feeling of fear, anguish, and continuous stress in such a way that it is a problem for every day and harms the eminence of life of the person.
The contemplations that cause discomfort (obsessions) cause the person to perform certain rituals or actions (compulsions) to reduce anxiety and feel better.
Obsessions include dread of contamination, feelings of uncertainty (for example, have I turned off the light?), Thoughts of offending someone. These thoughts go contrary to the person’s religious beliefs, among others. Compulsions include checking, counting, washing, and repeatedly organizing things, and so on.
6. Generalized anxiety disorder
Worrying for a short time is normal behavior. Still, when distress and feeling anxiety constantly affects and interferes with the normalcy of an individual’s life, that person may suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Thus, one can characterize this disorder with chronic worry and anxiety as these people are always worrying about something.
7. Mood Disorders
There are various types of mood disorders or emotional disorders, and, as the name suggests, their primary characteristic would be an alteration of the individual’s mood. The most common are the following:
8. Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder can impact how an individual feels, believes, and acts. It is categorized by exaggerated changes in mood, from obsession to crazy depression.
Therefore, it goes ahead of simple mood swings, that is, emotional insecurity. It has an emotional impact on many areas of life, and in addition to being one of the most common disorders, it directly associates with obesity. The cycles of bipolar disorder last days, weeks, or months, and seriously damage the work and social relationships of the person who suffers from it.
9. Depressive disorder
Every person feels miserable at some point in their lives. The emotional state of discouragement, frustration, and even desolation are normal in the face of disappointment and can last for several days before gradually disappearing. Now, for some people, these feelings can go on for months and years, causing severe problems in their day today.
Depression is serious psychopathology and debilitating. It can cause both physical and psychosomatic symptoms. For example, intake problems, sleep problems, malaise, fatigue, etc.
10. Eating Disorders
There are different types of eating disorders. The most common are the following:
11. Nervous Anorexia
Anorexia is characterized by an obsession with controlling the amount of food consumed. One of its most typical symptoms is the distortion of the body image.
People with anorexia constrain their food intake by dieting, fasting, and even excessive physical exercise. They hardly eat, and the little they eat causes an intense feeling of discomfort.
12. Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia is an eating behavior disorder characterized by abnormal eating patterns, with episodes of mass food intake followed by exercises that seek to exclude those calories (be induced vomiting, laxative, etc.). After these episodes, it is usual for the subject to feel sad, in a bad mood, and have feelings of misery.
Bulimia nervosa is associated with modifications in the brain. Among them is the dreadful conditions of white matter (which is where the thick sets of neuronal axons pass) in the corona radiata, which is linked, among other things, to the processing of flavors.
13. Binge eating disorder
The binge eating disorder is a serious disorder in which the individual who suffers frequently consume large amounts of food and feel you have lost control during the binge. After overeating, severe distress or weight concern usually appears.
14. Psychotic disorders
Psychotic disorders are severe psychopathology in which people lose contact with reality. Two of the major symptoms are hallucinations and delusions. Delusions are deceptive beliefs, such as the idea that someone is following you. Hallucinations are false perceptions, such as hearing, seeing, or feeling something that is not real.
Unlike delusions, which are untrue beliefs of reality about a prevailing fact or object, that is, misrepresentation of an external stimulus. Hallucinations are developed by the mind and are not the product of the distortion of any present object. It is similar to perceiving something without taking into account external stimuli. For example, hearing voices coming out of a socket. The most common psychotic disorders are:
15. Delusional disorder
The delusional disorder, also known as paranoia, is a psychotic disorder symbolized by one or more delusions. That is, these people are fully convinced of things that are not true. For example, someone is chasing you to hurt you.
16. Schizophrenia
In the case of schizophrenia, the person suffers from hallucinations and disturbing thoughts that are isolated from social activity. Schizophrenia is a very serious pathology, and despite the lack of a cure, there are efficient treatments so that people with this disorder can enjoy their lives.
17. Personality disorders
A personality disorder is a rigid and permanent pattern in a person’s behavior that creates difficulties or discomfort in their relationships and their surroundings. Personality disorders begin in adolescence or early adult life. The most frequent are:
18. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
The borderline personality disorder or borderline is characterized because people who suffer have a weak and changing personality and doubt everything. Calm moments can turn, instantly and without warning, into moments of rage, worry, or hopelessness. These people live their feelings to the fullest, and love relationships are intense, as they tend to idolize the other person to the extreme.
19. Antisocial disorder (TASP)
The individual who suffers from this disorder (poorly known with labels such as psychopaths or sociopaths) is characterized by his tendency not to relate in society, avoiding any interaction.
Additionally, people affected by TASP tend to be depressed, shy, and have social anxiety. This last point is due to their fear of being rejected. Despite this, psychological therapy is very effective in managing the inconveniences of antisocial disorder.
What difficulties does it generate?
Mental disorders can create discomfort and suffering. They can alter the functioning of people, of life, of the family relationship, they can change the role that people have in their environment, they can make them lose their relationship with work, and, finally, can generate distance from everything.
The disease affects the psychic life of people. But, the person remains the same, but what alters is part of their thinking, their emotions, their behavior, and compromise the development necessary to mature, for harmony and a balance that allows living in “normality.
This impact on the human being, which can be slow or rapid onset, immediately creates a sometimes uncontrollable situation for the person. Suffering can make a person think and act strangely, and this can cause them to seek isolation, distance, and abandon projects.
Feeling alien and incapable, perplexed, or overwhelmed, as if it were someone else, or thinking about things that no one agrees, only makes you feel different and, sometimes, excess.
Everything can be very difficult, and coexistence can suffer a lot.
One must try to overcome these difficulties in order to achieve a sufficient quality of life and following the expectations of the sick person.
For this reason, especially in serious and long-term illnesses, it is important to maintain links with the services that treat and with the services that rehabilitate and, depending on the specific difficulties of each person, follow a plan that aims to normalize the lifetime.
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