Mental Illness Signs and Where You Can Find Support

Mental illness is described as multiple conditions that affect how someone thinks and interacts socially with their emotional state and behaviours. It can result from a few factors like stressful life events, the use of substances, or chemical imbalance in one’s brain.

Mental Illness Signs

As a mental health carer, you should know signs of mental illness include destructive behaviour, unusual thinking, self-harm acts, feeling worthless, lack of self-care, difficulties in social and work life, significant mood changes, or confusion and disorientation. One can experience one or several mental illness signs simultaneously, suggesting they have a mental illness or are developing it.

The Common Mental Illnesses

Mental illness has become a common disorder. In every five Australians, one experiences the signs of mental illnesses annually. 45% of adults in Australia have had mental illness in their lifetime.

Below is a list of a few major categories of disorders described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

The neurodevelopmental disorder is usually diagnosed in infancy, adulthood, or adolescence. Neurodevelopmental disorders are attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), global developmental delay, autism spectrum disorder, and intellectual disability.

Bipolar And Other Related Disorders

Mental health services describe that the main characteristic of this disorder is changes in energy levels and shifts in moods. The bipolar disorder mostly ranges between periods of depression and elevated moods. The elevated moods are usually referred to as mania or hypomania.

Anxiety Disorders

This disorder is characterized by mental health services as persistent and excessive worry, anxiety, fear, and other related behavioural disturbances. Anxiety is the event that a person anticipates threats to face in the future. Fear is whereby a person provides an emotional reaction to a threat. The threat can be a real threat or a perceived threat. Examples of anxiety disorders a mental health carer should know are Social Anxiety Disorder, Agoraphobia, Separation Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

Disorders Related To Stress

They come about when one is exposed to stressful or traumatic events. Before, they were categorized as anxiety disorders by mental health services, but it was shifted to a different category of disorders. Disorders in the same category as stress related disorders are adjustment disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), acute stress disorder, and reactive attachment disorder.

Dissociative Disorders

These disorders involve interruption or disassociation in sections of consciousness like memory and identity. Examples of dissociative disorders mental health carer should know are Dissociative Amnesia, Derealization/Depersonalization Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Somatic Symptom Disorders

Mental health service describes this disorder as a psychological disorder with prominent physical symptoms that may fail to have any diagnosable physical cause. Examples of the disorders mental health carer should know include factitious disorder, illness anxiety disorder, conversion disorder, and somatic symptom disorder.

 

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