What is Mental Illness?

Mental illness is a collection of disorders characterized by symptoms such as extreme mood swings, disturbances in thought or perception, overwhelming obsessions or fears, or high levels of debilitating anxiety. There is no objective medical test that determines whether or not you or a loved one has a mental illness. Diagnosis is based on self-report (what you say you are experiencing), observations by family and friends, disturbances in your behaviour and the judgment and experience of a medical practitioner (your family doctor but, for more serious mental illness, a psychiatrist).

Often people wait a long time before they ask for help. They and their family feel that something is wrong – but they don’t know what. In addition, diagnosing a mental illness can take time – with many people reporting that it took months, and sometimes years to get a diagnosis that fit with what they were experiencing.

There are a number of reasons people struggle with a mental illness without reaching out for help: They simply don’t know what’s wrong and feel they are just “different;” they feel they can beat it on their own; they are ashamed and try to hide their symptoms; exasperated family and friends tell them to “get over it;” or they reach out for help but their first experience leaves them feeling disregarded and misunderstood.   

Yet we know that the earlier people get help, the better the outcome.

One way to get help for yourself or someone you know as soon as possible is to educate yourself about what a mental illness looks like.

Mental illness affects a person’s ability to function on a day-to-day basis. People have limited or no energy to work or go to school. It interferes with relationships. It may lead to social isolation and people neglecting their own welfare.

Mental illness affects almost every aspect of a person’s life over a considerable period of time. However, people can, and do, recover from mental illness.  

Depression

People with depression are not just sad, they experience the blackest of moods that sap their energy and take away their zest for life.

They lose interest in work and relationships. They can be irritable. They may experience sudden weight gain or weight loss.

They may sleep all the time or very little. They have difficulty getting up to face the day.

They may drink excessively or use drugs to help manage their overwhelming feelings.

They have thoughts such as “the world would be better off without me.” Some act on these thoughts and attempt suicide.

Others hide what they are really thinking and put on a brave face when among others.

Bipolar Disorder

People with bipolar disorder (previously call manic depression) experience emotional extremes. In the manic phase of their illness, they can be hyperactive and show poor judgment leading to risky behaviours or financial losses.

In the depressive phase, they experience the symptoms described above under depression.

People with bipolar disorder may use alcohol of drugs to try and manage their symptoms and they may attempt suicide. They also may come into contact with the law due to they behaviours while in a manic phase.

While the depressive phase is extremely painful, the manic phase can be a euphoric experience with many people with bipolar disorder remembering these times as an exciting and very wild ride – until they had to face the consequences.  

Schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia experience disturbances in their thoughts and perceptions. They can hear voices or see things that aren’t there. They may also hold beliefs that others find bizarre – for example, they are a famous person, they are being followed, or the television sends them secret messages.

Sometimes these thoughts and delusions are friendly, but in other instances they are frightening. They can get so caught up in this inner world that they isolate themselves from others, forget to shower or eat and withdraw from usual activities.

When questioned about what is going on, they may make no sense at all as their ability to communicate can be disturbed.

The symptoms of schizophrenia most commonly emerge when people are in their late teens or early adulthood.

Anxiety Disorders

This is a collection of problems that involve, in one way or another, excessive worry, fear, avoidance and irritability.

Examples are:

• Panic attacks where the heart races, people break out in a sweat and they can, literally, feel they are about to die;
• Agoraphobia characterized by extreme fear of leaving home or of deviating from a highly prescribed pattern of travel (for example, to work and back but nowhere else);
• Social phobia where people are so anxious in the presence of unfamiliar others that they avoid social situations; 
• Various phobias where people have strong and irrational fears related to objects, animals, reptiles or insects, experiences (flying or heights), needles, or the sight of blood (as only a few examples); 
• Obsessive compulsive disorder where people perform certain acts repetitively (hand washing, repeating a certain string of numbers, touching a certain object – there are endless examples) in the belief that doing so will prevent some feared event or consequence; 
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which emerges after a person has witnessed or experienced an event where they feared for their life (or another’s) and felt they could do nothing to save themselves (or the other person). PTSD is characterized by intrusive memories (flashbacks) of the event just as if it were happening all over again, avoidance of anything that reminds them of the event (sounds, places, or smells), emotional numbing, lack of concentration, sleep disturbances and nightmares, explosive anger and jumpiness (easily startled).

Eating Disorders

These disorders emerge when people (most typically girls and women, but some boys and men as well) either starve themselves even when they are, literally,like skeletons (anorexia nervosa) or, alternatively eat huge amounts of food (binge) and then cause themselves to vomit (purge) – bulimia. Both disorders can involve the mis-use of laxatives.

Anorexia is particularly dangerous as persistent starvation affects organ function and can ultimately result in death. People with anorexia have disturbed body images in that they perceive themselves as fat even when they are skin and bone.

Bulimia can result in damage to the esophagus, mouth and teeth due to repeated exposure to the corrosive nature of acidic vomit.

Personality Disorders

These are disturbances in judgment, impulse control, behavioural choices and especially how people relate to others. Personality disorders are believed to be mainly the result of extremely difficult childhood experiences (sexually, physical or emotional abuse, abandonment, or other hardships).

There are numerous types of personality disorders (as a few examples, paranoid, antisocial, or borderline) but they all result in chaotic relationships, reckless behaviours, and poor decisions (seriously affecting themselves, others or society) with limited to no ability to learn from experience.