Types Of Mental Disorders
Mental disorders are illnesses that are a result of an anomaly or dysfunction in the components of the brain that manifest themselves in the behavioral aspects of a person. Mental illnesses, in some cases may have extremely inconspicuous symptoms while in the other, the illness may be very pronounced. Treating mental disorders is a very delicate job, and not only involves medicines but many therapies as well. Compliance of the patients and the stigmatization of the society are also huge factors when mental disorders are concerned. Categorized roughly, there are several types of mental disorders.
Anxiety Disorders
These disorders are visible when a person exhibits anxiety symptoms in response to some specific events or circumstances. Typical anxiety symptoms that are visible are sweating, trembling and breathlessness. The patients of these types of mental disorders feel restlessness, uneasiness, and fear about real and fantastical events. Anxiety disorder is an umbrella term for phobias, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Social anxiety disorder and other anxiety disorder offshoots.
Mood Disorders
Mood disorders affect the disposition of the patient. There are two broad categories moods are classified into: mania and depression. Depressive disorders are the types of mental disorders that put the patient in a depressive mood. They are referred to as unipolar depressive disorders when there are recurrent episodes of depression (none of mania that is). However, when a manic episode comes in, defined by hyperactivity, increased appetite, increased sexuality and increased optimism and self-glory, the combination is known as bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is defined by an erratic transformation of the two moods, namely mania and depression, in a cyclic manner.
Psychotic Disorders
These types of mental disorders meddle with the functioning of the mind and its ability to grasp the reality. Psychotic disorder patients are unable to distinguish reality from the converse; moreover, they experience hallucinations (false sounds, incidents etc) and delusion (belief in unreal happenings). Schizophrenia is perhaps the biggest example of psychotic disorders.
Eating Disorders
Eating disorders cause the patient to build abnormal thoughts and notions about his/her diet and figure. These types of mental disorders are extremely dangerous in their own way: the patients have a very hard-grounded belief and are very insistent upon it. Common types of eating disorders include Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.
Sexual Disorders
These types of mental disorders affect the sexuality and the performance of a person. Types include gender identity disorder and paraphilias.
Dissociative Disorders
Previously called as multiple-personality disorder, dissociative disorder tampers severely with the patient’s memory and consciousness including his own identity knowledge. These types of mental disorders include amnesia, dementia, depersonalization disorder, split personality disorder etc.
Substance abuse Disorders
As the names suggests, these types of mental disorders emerge because of overindulgence in drugs or any other chemicals that cast harmful effects on the body.
Sleep Disorders
Disturbances in the normal sleep cycle are referred to as sleep disorders. They include insomnia and hypersomnia.
Personality Disorders
These types of mental disorders cause a negative effect on the behavior, habits, mannerisms and the overall personality of the patient. The patient tends to create whimsical notions and rules about different social aspects and can be very rigid about them. The examples are anti-social, narcissist, histrionic, borderline and obsessive compulsive personality disorders.
Somatoform Disorder
The patient suffers from mental illness and effects that are a result of an illness of the body
Factitous Disorder
The symptoms of the disease, which the patient reports, are a product of fiction and simply imagined.
