A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is also characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior, often in a social context. Such disturbances may occur as single episodes, may be persistent, or may be relapsing–remitting. There are many different types of mental disorders, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. A mental disorder is one aspect of mental health. The causes of mental disorders are often unclear. Theories incorporate findings from a range of fields. Disorders may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain. Disorders are usually diagnosed or assessed by a mental health professional, such as a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse, or clinical social worker, using various methods such as psychometric tests, but often relying on observation and questioning. Cultural and religious beliefs, as well as social norms, should be taken into account when making a diagnosis. Services for mental disorders are usually based in psychiatric hospitals, outpatient clinics, or in the community. Treatments are provided by mental health professionals. Common treatment options are psychotherapy or psychiatric medication, while lifestyle changes, social interventions, peer support, and self-help are also options. In a minority of cases, there may be involuntary detention or treatment. Prevention programs have been shown to reduce depression. In 2019, common mental disorders around the globe include: major depression, which affects about 264 million people; dementia, which affects about 50 million; bipolar disorder, which affects about 45 million; and schizophrenia and other psychoses, which affect about 20 million people. Neurodevelopmental disorders include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (autism), and intellectual disability, of which onset occurs early in the developmental period. Stigma and discrimination can add to the suffering and disability associated with mental disorders, leading to various social movements attempting to increase understanding and challenge social exclusion.
Definition The definition and classification of mental disorders are key issues for researchers as well as service providers and those who may be diagnosed. For a mental state to be classified as a disorder, it generally needs to cause dysfunction. Most international clinical documents use the term mental "disorder", while "illness" is also common. It has been noted that using the term "mental" (i.e., of the mind) is not necessarily meant to imply separateness from the brain or body, although the distinction between mind and brain, as well as the question of their fundamental nature, is often insufficiently examined in psychiatry. According to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), published in 1994, a mental disorder is a psychological syndrome or pattern that is associated with distress (e.g., via a painful symptom), disability (impairment in one or more important areas of functioning), increased risk of death, or causes a significant loss of autonomy; however, it excludes normal responses such as the grief from loss of a loved one and also excludes deviant behavior for political, religious, or societal reasons not arising from a dysfunction in the individual. The DSM-IV definition states that, like many medical terms, mental disorder "lacks a consistent operational definition that covers all situations". It notes that different levels of abstraction can be used for medical definitions, including pathology, symptomology, deviance from a normal range, or etiology, and that the same is true for mental disorders, so that sometimes one type of definition is appropriate and sometimes another, depending on the situation. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) redefined mental disorders in the DSM-5 as "a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning." The final draft of ICD-11 contains a very similar definition.
Nervous illness
A mental breakdown, nervous breakdown or mental health crisis is an acute, time-limited, mental disorder that manifests primarily as severe, stress-induced depression, anxiety, paranoia, or dissociation in a previously functional individual, to the extent that they are no longer able to function on a day-to-day basis until the disorder is resolved. A nervous breakdown is often closely tied to psychological burnout, severe overwork, sleep deprivation, and similar stressors, which may combine to temporarily overwhelm an individual with otherwise sound mental functions. A mental breakdown can last for hours at a time, to months at a time. While these time periods can vary between different people, their reactions to the mental breakdown may also vary. These terms have not been formally defined through a medical diagnostic system such as the DSM-5 or ICD-10 and are nearly absent from scientific literature regarding mental illness. In addition to the concept of mental disorder, some people have argued for a return to the old-fashioned concept of nervous illness. In How Everyone Became Depressed: The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown (2013), Edward Shorter, a professor of psychiatry and the history of medicine, says:
We have had nervous illness for centuries. When you are too nervous to function ... it is a nervous breakdown. But that term has vanished from medicine, although not from the way we speak.... The nervous patients of yesteryear are the depressives of today. That is the bad news.... There is a deeper illness that drives depression and the symptoms of mood. We can call this deeper illness something else, or invent a neologism, but we need to get the discussion off depression and onto this deeper disorder in the brain and body. That is the point. In eliminating the nervous breakdown, psychiatry has come close to having its own nervous breakdown.
Classifications
There are currently two widely established systems that classify mental disorders:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
