What is a Mental Health Disorder? | The Five Most Common Mental Health Disorders | The Takeaway
Overview
With increased media exposure over the past few decades, mental health disorders and their effects on individuals, and in fact – all of society – have seen more awareness and less stigma than ever before.
Important discoveries in psychology, psychiatry, and other specialties have precipitated advances in how healthcare, education, and occupational realms deal with mental illness.
But there is still a lot of work to do. Despite these advances, mental health disorders account for 14 percent of all deaths globally.[1]
Although many types of emotional and cognitive disorders exist, the most common ones can be categorized into five types.
What is a Mental Health Disorder?
A mental health disorder, also known as mental illness, defines a wide range of conditions that negatively affect individuals’ emotional and cognitive health.
Most people will experience some form of mental health issue temporarily throughout their lifetime. Still, a mental health disorder is an ongoing ailment that affects thoughts, moods, and behaviors so significantly that it impairs a person’s ability to function.
It’s easy to see how these conditions can cause daily problems that spill over into a person’s private and work lives, causing them extreme discomfort.
The Five Most Common Mental Health Disorders
1) Anxiety Disorders: The most common mental health concern today. Affecting around 40 million adults in the US,[2] these types of disorders are marked by distress, extreme worry, and fear – even in situations deemed not stressful by most definitions.
As a result, people who suffer from anxiety disorders experience near-constant discomfort that can leave them exhausted and dysfunctional.
This condition includes obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), social anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
2) Mood Disorders: In the broadest context, these types of conditions are disturbances of mood such as depression or euphoria or alternating between these two emotional “highs” and “lows.”[3]
Bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder are some common conditions under the mood disorders umbrella.[3] There is no known cause for these conditions, although chemical imbalances in the brain are suspected.
Medications and cognitive behavioral therapy as the most frequently utilized modes of treatment.
3) Psychotic Disorders: A collection of psychological symptoms resulting in losing contact with reality. One or more symptoms of delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking, speech, and motor behavior can be present in a person with psychosis.[4]
Schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, and paraphrenia can all be included in this category of mental illness.
Treatment may include medications such as antipsychotics or neuroleptics, aiming to restore chemical balance in the brain.
Psychotherapy can also change the person’s delusional thought patterns and replace them with more realistic ones.
4) Dementia: This umbrella term describes progressive cognitive diseases with the common theme of decline in cognition.
Over time (usually years), this decline becomes significant enough to interfere with independent, daily functioning.[5] Memory, language, problem-solving, and other cognitive functions are impacted until they are diminished to the point that the affected person can no longer care for themselves.
Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia are the main examples of this degenerative cognitive ailment.
As there is no cure for dementia, treatments are focused on managing and reducing symptoms such as agitation, psychosis, and insomnia.
Medications may be administered for these symptoms, and cognitive stimulation therapies are often used where patients are given puzzles of varying degrees of challenge.
5) Eating Disorders: Defined as any mental condition in which persistent eating behavior disturbance results in physical and mental health impairment.
Due to the cognitive-physical connection of this group of mental health disorders, they carry the highest death rate of any mental illness – usually by malnutrition or suicide.[6]
Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorders are the most common types in this category, all sharing a preoccupation with body weight and shape and an unhealthy relationship with food.
Although there are no definitive medical treatments, some have shown promise, such as medications that affect the central nervous system targeting the reduction of binge eating episodes.[7] Psychotherapy and nutritional counseling are also used to treat these often-overlapping conditions.
The Takeaway
Mental health disorders are complex, multi-faceted illnesses that are often difficult to fully diagnose and treat as they can be exacerbated or relieved by the affected person’s environment, emotional state, and many other factors that are not always in one’s control.
Diagnosis can be delayed as those with mental health disorders often hide symptoms for fear of social stigma.
However, if you suspect that you have any of these conditions, please know that you are not alone. They are common to millions of people in the US and worldwide.
Please see your doctor if you feel you are experiencing mental health challenges.
Help is available, and you can live a full and comfortable life – especially when treatment is accessed early.
References:
- Walker, J., Burke, K., Wanat, M., Fisher, R., Fielding, J., Mulick, A., Puntis, S., Sharpe, J., Esposti, M. D., Harriss, E., Frost, C., & Sharpe, M. (2018). The prevalence of depression in general hospital inpatients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of interview-based studies. Psychological medicine, 48(14), 2285–2298. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291718000624
- Facts & Statistics: Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. Facts & Statistics | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. (n.d.). https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics
- Sekhon, S., & Gupta, V. (2023). Mood Disorder. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing.
- Gaebel, W., & Zielasek, J. (2015). Focus on psychosis. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 17(1), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2015.17.1/wgaebel
- Gale, S. A., Acar, D., & Daffner, K. R. (2018). Dementia. The American journal of medicine, 131(10), 1161–1169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2018.01.022
- Arcelus, J., Mitchell, A. J., Wales, J., & Nielsen, S. (2011). Mortality rates in patients with anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders. A meta-analysis of 36 studies. Archives of general psychiatry, 68(7), 724–731. https://doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.74
- Lutter M. (2017). Emerging Treatments in Eating Disorders. Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics, 14(3), 614–622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13311-017-0535-x
