Mental Illness Definition

For more than thousand years, human beings are aware of this unfortunate disease. Although they were a certain level of awareness, they had used different terms to describe the disease. They did not always perceive mental illness as a medical problem.

The most accepted view among western societies changed as a result of the research and developments in this area. The increased knowledge helped people to understand the disease facts together with increased awareness among general population.

With this help of advanced research and development, the disease knowledge and the current medical practice is far better than the past. Thus we can say that today, this disease refers together to all of the mental disorders that can be diagnosed.

Today scientists have a wide range of alternative and effective treatments. Mental illness captures various kinds of mental disorders of attitudes, behavior, thought and mood. Mental illness is a disease condition that covers various kinds of mental disorders that contains disorders of mood, thought and daily activities. To name a disease condition as a mental illness, it should represent a decreased ability to perform professionally, psychologically or interpersonally. It is a disease state that refers generally to a group of conditions in which individuals experience problems with normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral function; these conditions are associated with distress and/or impaired functioning. Other terms commonly used to refer to mental illness include mental disorder, psychiatric disorder, emotional illness, or mental disease. Although such terms imply a clear distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” states of mind, mental disorders, like many concepts in medicine and science, are not always well defined. Thus, when discussing mental illness, it is important to remember that normal functioning can encompass a wide range of behaviors. Mental illness is hypothesized to have many causes, including social, psychological, biochemical, and genetic factors, as well as medical causes, such as infection or head trauma. It can affect people of all races, ethnic groups, geographical locations, sexes, ages, and income levels. About one in five people will have a diagnosable mental disorder during the course of a year.

Mental illness includes a wide spectrum of severity from a mild disturbance in which a person can function relatively normally, to moderate impairment that interferes with daily living, to complete incapacitation. Although it can be difficult to objectively determine when a person requires help for a mental disorder, some of the key warning signs are when the problem impairs the individual’s personal, social, or occupational functioning.

Mental illness is challenging for patients, families, and health care providers because it often does not have a single clear-cut cause, but rather may result from multiple factors. What’s more, because there are often no objective medical tests for precisely diagnosing a mental disorder, diagnosis is often based on identifying a cluster of signs and symptoms characteristic of a specific condition.

As we have mentioned above, people who have mental illness may be experiencing difficulties with their emotions and stress. Within their daily activities they may be having lots of troubles while trying to handle and control their social and family environment. As mentioned above mental illness may have several types like physical illness do. Today many people are still afraid of this disease. It is not clearly understood by the general population. We believe that as the people will have more information, the less fear will be the case.

The management of mental illness includes the below objectives:

• To control the patients’ symptoms together with increased quality of life
• Increasing the early diagnosis of mental illness
• The decreased level of stigma and discrimination to people who are suffering from mental illness
• To provide prevention and to treatment methods to young population
• To increase disease awareness among general population

We all know that Mental Illness is a universal disease. Every county has its own statistics where they indicate significant numbers of people who are suffering from this disease. Most of the cases hospitalization occurs for these patients. Unfortunately as mentioned above only few people have adequate information about the disease. As a consequence people fear about it. Feeling of shame, disgrace and dishonor prevents people to get professional help. All these hesitation represents a barrier to get an effective treatment.

Thus people should really understand what mental disease stands for. No one should forget that closing itself to the world may be more destructive than the illness itself.

It is time to beat this disease. Please find below the crucial facts about this disease:

• Mental illness is a common biologically based CNS disorder. The intelligence and personal characters does nothing to do with this illness.
• Mental illness has a disease progression where it flows from mild to moderate, moderate to severe cases.
• Mental Illness is a universal disease and very common in general population.
• However only a small portion is being effected from the burden of this disease.
• According to the US statistics, 1 out 17 people suffer from the severe cases.
• According to the WHO report mental illness is responsible from nearly half of the leading causes of disability in US.
• There is a big burden to the world because of the mental illness. The annual cost of mental illness is above the 100 Billion US Dollars within United States.
• Although all ages are vulnerable to Mental illness it is frequently diagnosed at the early stages of the life. The old and young population are more susceptible to this disease.
• As soon as people are diagnosed with mental illness, they should get the necessary care and treatment without loosing time. Otherwise people’s health related quality of life may be worsening together with disability, loss of productivity, unemployment, suicide, substance abuse, as the progression of the disease flow to severity.
• Good news is mental illness cam be treated. Even for severe cases current treatment alternatives, medications have high success rates among the disease population. At an average 80% of the patients have significant fall in disease symptoms. Patients have a better quality of life as they access to their medications along with supportive psychosocial treatment.
• Early diagnosis is crucial for the management of mental illness. By diagnosing the disease at an early stage, the clinical results of the effective treatments have high success rates. The acceleration of the recovery takes place.
• With the employment of successful treatment strategies mental illness may be treated and there will be less burden to the society.

As mentioned above, mental illness is distinguished by abnormalities in comprehension, attention, understanding abilities, and emotion, mood or highest features of attitudes and behavior. All of this mentioned mental functions are organized and interceded by brain. Brain function and symptoms have a strong link where behavioral symptoms clearly indicate alterations and abnormalities in the brain. However there is a strong need to distinguish the terms illness, disorder and disease. We all accept that as part of mental illness; patients who are suffering from schizophrenia can be classified in group of severe illness. However for other mental disorders like attention deficit disorders and depression symptoms indicates a progression in itself and can hardly be distinguished between health and illness and disease. Different types of mental illness may change with the gender, age, culture and society. Although there is a thin gray line between health and illness, current research and development may study on the mechanisms of the illness. Thus the future of managing mental illness will be brighter with promising personalized treatments.