Introduction to Mental Health and Disorders

Mental Health

A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not just the absence of disease or infirmity.
People with good mental health are able to fulfill their responsibilities, function effectively in daily life, and maintain healthy relationships.

Mental Illness

A clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern associated with present distress.
Affects mood, behavior, and thinking, including conditions like depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and addictive disorders.

Psychiatry

The branch of medicine specializing in the study, treatment, and prevention of mental illness, using both medical and psychological therapies.

Psychopathology

The scientific study of the origins, symptoms, and development of psychological disorders.

Affect

The objectively observed expression of emotion.

Mood

A pervasive and sustained emotion subjectively experienced and reported by the person

Delusions

Fixed, false, unshakable beliefs that are not consistent with a person's cultural background.

Types of Delusions

Persecutory/ Paranoid Delusion: Belief that others are planning to harm or spy on them.
Grandiose Delusion: Belief that they are associated with famous people or celebrities.
Thought Broadcasting: Belief that others can read or hear their thoughts, as if they are being broadcast over the air or radio.
Somatic Delusion: Vague and unrealistic beliefs about their health and bodily functions.
Referential Delusion: Incorrect interpretation of external events as having a direct reference to themselves (e.g., TV, newspaper...).
Nihilistic Delusion: False belief that they or a part of themselves doesn’t exist.

Obsessions

Repetitive ideas, images, feelings, or urges that persistently enter a person's mind despite resistance.
They are unwanted, distressful, and recognized as senseless and irrational.
Often followed by compelling actions (compulsions).

Common Obsessional Contents

Dirt/contamination/cleaning
Orderliness/symmetry
Doubts/checking/counting
Aggressive impulses/inappropriate acts
Religion (blasphemous thoughts)
Ruminations: Obsessional thoughts.
Rituals: Repeated compulsions.

Disorders of the Stream of Thought

Tangentiality: Difficulty staying on topic, going off on tangents.
Circumstantiality: Providing countless unnecessary details while eventually reaching a desired goal.
Poverty of Thoughts: Few, slow, and unvaried thoughts, associated with a lack of speech.
Thought Block: Sudden cessation of thought flow, resulting in a complete emptying of the mind, not caused by an external influence.
Loosening of Associations: Lack of logical connection between thoughts.
Flight of Ideas: Rapidly shifting incomplete ideas, still with an understandable link.
Thought Perseveration: Persistent and inappropriate repetition of the same sequence of thoughts.
Incoherence: Mixture of phrases with no meaning or logical connection.

Abnormalities of Speech

Echolalia: Imitation of words or phrases made by others.
Pressure of Speech: Rapid, uninterrupted speech that is increased in amount.
Mutism: Inability to speak.
Elective Mutism: Refusal to speak in certain circumstances.
Poverty of Speech: Restricted amount of speech.
Stuttering (Stammering): Frequent repetition or prolongation of a sound or syllable, leading to impaired speech fluency.
Clang Associations (Rhyming): Association of words similar in sound but not in meaning (e.g., deep, keep, sleep).
Word Salad: Incoherent mixture of words and phrases.

Abnormalities of Perception

Illusions: Misperceptions or misinterpretations of real external sensory stimuli (e.g., shadows misperceived as frightening figures).
Hallucinations: False sensory perceptions not associated with real external stimuli, involving any of the five senses.

Hallucinations

Auditory: False perceptions sound (e.g., voices, noises, music).
Visual: False visual perceptions (e.g., formed images of people or unformed images like flashes of light).
Tactile: False perceptions of touch, such as a sensation of something crawling on or under the skin.

Disorders of Memory

Amnesia: Partial or total inability to recall past experiences, with both organic and emotional origins.
Anterograde Amnesia: Inability to recall events occurring after a specific point in time.
Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to recall events that occurred prior to a specific point in time.
Total Amnesia: Inability to recall recent and remote events.
Circumscribed Amnesia: Inability to recall events for a limited amount of time.

Orientation

The ability to correctly relate oneself to time, place, and person.

Disorientation

Impaired ability to identify time, place, and person.

Judgment

The ability to assess a situation correctly and act appropriately within that situation.

Impaired Judgment

Diminished ability to understand a situation correctly and act appropriately.

Insight

The ability to understand the objective condition of one's mental illness.

Impaired Insight

Diminished ability to understand the objective condition of one's mental illness.

Attention

The ability to focus on the matters at hand.

Concentration

The ability to maintain that focus.

Disorders of Attention and Concentration

Distractibility: Inability to concentrate, attention drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli.

Mood Disturbance

Depressed Mood: Feeling of sadness, pessimism, and loneliness
Anhedonia: Lack of pleasure in activities that are normally pleasurable.
Grief: Sadness appropriate to a real loss (e.g., death of a relative).
Elevated Mood: Mood that is more cheerful than usual.
Anxiety: Feeling of apprehension accompanied by autonomic symptoms (e.g., muscle tension, perspiration, tachycardia), caused by anticipation of danger.
Panic: Acute, self-limiting, episodic intense attack of anxiety associated with overwhelming dread and autonomic symptoms.
Phobia: Irrational, exaggerated fear and avoidance of a specific object, situation, or activity.