Blog : Mental disorder pt.3

Mental disorder pt.3

10/12/2009 10:23 am

Introduction; Personality Disorders; Psychoses; Other Forms of Mental Disorder; Anxiety Disorders; Other Neurotic Disorders; Childhood Disorders
V Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is the predominant symptom in two conditions: panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

In phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorders, also considered anxiety disorders, fear is experienced when an individual tries to master other symptoms. A phobia is an irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that is classed as a disorder when it becomes so intense that it interferes with everyday life. Among the most disturbing of these is agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. The most common phobic problem among people seeking psychiatric help, it often prevents them from leaving their homes for any reason. Obsessions are repetitive thoughts, images, ideas, or impulses that make no sense to the person, who can fear being unable to avoid committing a violent act, for example, or worry over whether some small duty has been performed. Compulsions are repetitive behaviours performed dutifully to try to ward off some future event. Examples of such behaviour include repeated washing of the hands or counting and recounting possessions or other objects.

VI Other Neurotic Disorders

In addition to neurotic depression and anxiety disorders, other conditions that have historically been considered neurotic include hysteria, conversion reactions, psychogenic pain, hypochondriasis, and dissociative disorders.

The so-called somatoform disorders are characterized by physical symptoms for which no physical cause is evident. In hysteria, complaints are presented dramatically, if vaguely, usually beginning during the teen years and continuing through adult life. Women have been much more frequently diagnosed as having hysteria than men. The rare conversion disorders (hysterical neurosis) commonly mimic a neurological disease such as paralysis. Psychogenic pain is pain for which no physical cause is apparent. In hypochondriasis, the patient is preoccupied with the fear of illness.

Included in the dissociative disorders are a form of amnesia that apparently stems from psychological causes and multiple personality—a rare condition in which the manifestation of two or more separate personalities exist in the same person.

VII Childhood Disorders

Several mental disorders are first evident in infancy, childhood, and adolescence.

Mental underdevelopment is characterized by the inability to learn normally and to become as independent and socially responsible as others of the same age in the same culture. People having an intelligence quotient (IQ) of less than 70 are considered retarded.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) includes conditions marked by inappropriate lack of attention, by impulsiveness, and by hyperactivity, in which the child has difficulty organizing and completing work, is unable to stick to activities or follow instructions, and is excessively restless.

Anxiety disorders include fear of leaving home and parents (separation), excessive shrinking from contact with strangers (avoidance), and excessive, unfocused worrying and fearful behaviour.

Pervasive developmental disorders are characterized by distortions in several psychological functions, such as attention, perception, reality testing, and motor movement. An example is infantile autism, a condition marked by unresponsiveness to other people, bizarre responses, and gross inability to communicate.

Among the other childhood disorders are those involving behaviour problems, overeating, anorexia nervosa (self-starvation), tics, stuttering and other speech disorders, and bed-wetting (enuresis).

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