MENTAL DISORDERS

To begin I will give feedback on the subject of | Mental Disorders|:

Mental disorders are conditions that impact your thinking, feelings, mood, and behavior.
They can affect your ability to relate to friends and family. They originate in purely
organic or biological changes due to alterations that occur in certain brain substances,
which regulate our behavior and our emotions; These substances are called
neurotransmitters.

Mental health has many alterations that are known as diseases or mental disorders,
which affect affective and cognitive processes, mood, thinking and behavior. Many
people suffer from mental health problems from time to time. Instead, it becomes a
mental illness when the symptoms and signs remain, cause stress in the person and
prevent him from continuing his life normally.

TYPES OF MENTAL DISORDERS

A mental disorder is characterized by a clinically significant impairment of an individual's

cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior. It is usually associated with distress or
functional disability in other important areas. There are many different types of mental
disorders.

1. Neurodevelopmental disorder.

These disorders are those that are diagnosed during childhood or adolescence. These
conditions begin during development, often before the child begins primary school, and
are characterized by impairments in personal, social, or academic functioning.

 Intellectual disability: It affects the ability to adapt to the environment, causing

the affected person not to reach academic, work and personal independence
functioning. It usually originates before the age of 18 and is mainly characterized
by involving different limitations in both intellectual functioning and adaptive
behaviors.
 Global developmental delay: usually diagnosed in children under five years of
age, who do not meet the expected milestones for their age.
 Speech disorders: These mental disorders are those that affect the ability to use,
understand or detect both the language and speech of others and their own.
They include language, speech and communication impairments.
 Autism spectrum disorder: It is a deficit in social interaction, in communication
with others and in developing certain behaviors or restricted and repetitive
interests.
  Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): These are behaviors of
hyperactivity and impulsivity, and inattention. Several symptoms should be
detected before the age of 12.

2. Bipolar and related disorders

 These psychological disorders are characterized by extreme and alternating

changes in mood, emotions and behavior that also affect activity and energy
levels. Among these disorders are bipolar disorder type 1 (episodes of mania),
bipolar type 2 (at least one episode of hypomania, long depressive periods) and
cyclothymic.

3. Anxiety disorders

These are one of the most well-known types of psychological disorders. Mainly, they
are characterized by experiencing persistent and excessive fear, worry or distress.
These psychological problems arise due to an anticipation that a future threat may
arise. There are different types of anxiety disorders, among the most common we
find the following:

• Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Refers to excessive preoccupation with

everyday events.

• Agoraphobia: This emotional disorder is characterized by experiencing an

irrational fear of environments or situations that could cause panic.

• Social anxiety disorder: People who suffer from these emotional disorders often
suffer from a fear of being observed or judged. Therefore, when experiencing this
emotional disorder, individuals often avoid social environments.

• Specific phobias: Phobias involve extreme fear of specific objects or situations.

• Panic disorder: This psychic disorder is mainly characterized by the sudden onset
of intense fear or discomfort that can arise out of nowhere and for no apparent
reason.

 Separation anxiety disorder: It is usually one of the most common childhood

disorders. It consists of experiencing an excessive amount of fear or anxiety
when separating from an attachment figure (such as the father or mother).

4. Stress-related disorders

Another of the most common mental disorders with those that are related to stress.
Primarily, they involve exposure to a stressful or traumatic event. We find the following.
• Acute stress disorder: This mental disorder is characterized by the onset of severe
anxiety for a period of up to one month after exposure to a traumatic event.

• Adjustment disorders: These emotional disorders can occur as a response to a very

sudden change, such as divorce, loss of a job, the end of a relationship, among others.
Once the stressor or its consequences are over, symptoms do not remain for more than
another six months.

• Post-traumatic stress disorder: Develops after a person has experienced exposure to

actual death, threat, serious injury, or even sexual violence. The main symptoms of this
mental disorder is usually reliving the event.

• Reactive attachment disorder: Occurs when children do not have a healthy attachment
relationship with their caregivers. The main symptoms include social and emotional
disturbances as well as inhibited, emotionally withdrawn behavior towards adult
caregivers resulting from this care or neglect on the part of their caregivers.

5. Dissociative disorders

These are psychological disorders that involve a dissociation or interruption in aspects

of consciousness, identity and memory. There are different types of these mental
disorders.

• Dissociative amnesia: This disorder involves an inability to remember information

related to your autobiography that can be focused on an event or period of time,
selective of a specific aspect of an event or generalized to the entire life history.
These forgetfulness are incompatible with normal forgetfulness. Most people who
have dissociative amnesia are not aware of having amnesia, only becoming aware
when circumstances lead them to think they have lost autobiographical information.

• Dissociative identity disorder: Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, and

involves the presence of two or more different identities or personalities in the same
body.

• Depersonalization/derealization disorder: This psychological disorder is mainly

characterized by having the sensation of being outside one's own body
(depersonalization) and also by being disconnected from the environment.

7. Eating disorders these types of mental disorders are primarily characterized by

having an obsessive preoccupation with weight as well as acquiring various
behaviors to compensate for or limit food intake. Among these mental illnesses we
find the following:
• Anorexia nervosa: The person suffering from this mental pathology tries to
eliminate or drastically reduce food consumption since he has a distorted view of his
weight. These behaviors lead to significantly low body weight relative to age, sex,
developmental course, and physical health.

• Bulimia nervosa: These psychological problems involve the person binging on food
and trying to take steps to compensate for this compulsive eating.

• Rumination disorder: It is mainly characterized by regurgitating different foods that

have been excessively chewed or ingesting them to spit them out or swallow them
again.

• Pica: People with this mental illness feel an urge to consume non-nutritive or non-
food substances, such as dirt, paint or soap.

• Binge eating disorder: This psychic disorder implies that people who suffer from it
have episodes of food intake clearly higher than what most people would eat in a
similar period in the same circumstances. People experience a feeling of lack of
control at the start or inability to stop in the course. There is no desire for a specific
nutrient and it does not necessarily respond to feelings of hunger.

8. Sleep disorders

These mental pathologies imply that there is an interruption in the sleep pattern of
an individual, which is equivalent to experiencing anguish and other symptoms that
hinder a good daytime functioning. Among the most common sleep disorders are
the following:

• Narcolepsy: This psychological disorder involves people experiencing an

irrepressible need for sleep.

• Insomnia disorder: This is one of the most common mental illnesses within sleep
disorders. Those who suffer from it can not sleep enough to feel fully rested and
with the necessary energy to face a new day.

• Hypersomnolence: When suffering from this mental disorder, the person

experiences excessive sleepiness even though he has had an adequate sleep
period.

• Sleep-related disorders: These psychological problems affect breathing during

sleep.

• Parasomnias: This psychological disorder involves abnormal behavior during

sleep. Among the most common we find sleepwalking, night terrors, sleeping
talking, among others.
9. Depressive disorders

These are one of the most common mental illnesses today. It is characterized by the
presence of a sad, empty and irritable mood, as well as the presence of certain
physical and cognitive symptoms related to this type of sensations. The best known
are the following:

• Major depressive disorder: These mental problems involve a loss of interest in

daily activities. In addition, this type of depression leads to not being able to face the
day to day normally.

• Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia): This mental disorder involves chronic

depression with more or less severe symptoms.

• Premenstrual dysphoric disorder: This is a form of premenstrual syndrome that is

characterized by both depression and irritability and anxiety one to two weeks
before menstruation begins.

• Depressive disorder induced by substances or medications: These psychological

pathologies occur when a person experiences symptoms of depression due to the
consumption or withdrawal of alcohol or other harmful substances or medications.

10. Schizophrenia spectrum disorders and other psychotic disorders

These types of mental disorders are characterized by abnormalities in at least one

of these symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thoughts and/or
behaviors. These psychological illnesses do not include those who suffer from
impaired cognition at birth or early in life. We highlight the following:

• Delirium: Delusions are beliefs that do not go away despite evidence to the
contrary showing that they are true to us. They can be persecutory, somatic,
grandeur, religious, etc. They are outlandish and clearly implausible.

• Hallucinations: are perceptions that are experienced without any external stimulus.
The experiences are as clear as the experiences of daily life. They cannot be
controlled and occur in any sensory modality, although auditory ones are the most
common.

• Disorganized thinking: The person shows a changing discourse producing

associations between very tangential topics. It can resemble sensory aphasia,
although it is rare. It hinders fluid communication.

• Disorganized motor behavior: They can be infantiloid and unpredictable behaviors,

it can even interfere when addressing a target. Within this group, in its maximum
severity, is catatonia, which involves a lack of reactivity to the environment that can
resist following instructions, rigid or extravagant posture, inappropriate verbal
responses or mutism and motor responses without purpose or stereotyped.

• Schizotypal personality disorder: Social and interpersonal deficits with a lack of

ability to establish close relationships, present distortions of thought and perception,
in addition to eccentric behaviors.

• Delusional disorder: Deficits are concentrated in psychosis linked to delusions for

at least 1 month without other psychotic symptoms.

• Brief psychotic disorder: Lasts more than a day, but less than a month. (May be
substance-induced)

• Schizophrenia: It lasts at least six months and presents at least two symptoms of
those described above, of which at least one must be delusions, hallucinations or
disorganized speech. In addition, it is strongly impacted on its level of operation.

This would be the most common mental illnesses today.

They are also called mental health problems, although the latter term is broader and
encompasses mental disorders, psychosocial disabilities and other mental states
associated with considerable distress, functional disability.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DISEASE AND DISORDER

Illness

They are those pathological processes that can be seen, touched and measured.
Therefore, a psychological illness has both particular signs and symptoms.

It is usually reserved for those pathological processes in which the loss of health
has a known organic cause.

Disorders

This is characterized by functional impairment and impaired function and normal

structure of the body.

It is broader and is used when there is a generic alteration of health, whether or not
it is a direct consequence of an organic cause.

DATA

In 2019, one in eight people in the world (equivalent to 970 million people) suffered
from a mental disorder. The most common are anxiety and depressive disorders,
but in 2020 they increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic; Initial estimates show a
26% and 28% increase in anxiety and major depressive disorders in just one year.
Although effective prevention and treatment options exist, most people with mental
disorders do not have access to effective care. In addition, many suffer stigma,
discrimination and human rights violations.

HISTORY

In ancient Egypt and other civilizations, it was believed that mental illnesses were
caused by the devil or were punishment of the gods, for their healing they made
exorcisms and other rituals of a religious nature. The Greeks inherited from these
primitive civilizations the idea of the supernatural and thus resorted to religion to try
to understand and cure diseases.

1. Hippocrates (460 to 377 BC). He thought that the brain originated our sensations
and feelings, was the center of intelligence and that psychological disorders
originated from natural causes.

2. Aristotle (384 to 322 BC). It assumes the Hippocratic concepts.

3. Plato (384-347 BC). He considered mental disorders to be partly ethical and

partly divine and could be classified into prophetic, ritual, poetic and erotic.

4. Galen (100-200 BC. Doctor of gladiators, he takes up the ideas of Hippocrates

and places the brain as the center of intelligence.

5. The Arabs build the first establishment for the care of the insane in Damascus,
Emir El Ouafid Ibn Abdelmelik, "in order to intern and care for the weak of spirit" in
the year 707 and somewhat later another in Baghdad around 765 these
establishments are characterized by the humane treatment given to those admitted
there.

6. Beliefs about possession by the devil persisted approximately until the middle of
the eighteenth century and the treatment that these people received in the
establishments in which they were confined was based on the use of coercive
means.

7. If they were not interned, they wandered alone and were mocked, mistreated and
contempted.

8. In the storming of the Bastille8 on July 14, 1789 only seven people were
imprisoned of whom two were considered insane, one of them was an Irish citizen of
Dublin named De Witt whose only crime was to believe himself to be Julio Cesar.

9. The law for reform in Italy is approved in 1978 "Law 180/833" this law provides:
I. The progressive closure of psychiatric hospitals, prohibiting the construction of
new ones or the operation of new hospitalizations.

II. The opening of small hospitalization departments in general hospitals or in Mental

Health Centers scattered throughout the territory.

III. The creation of small protected structures, which offer privacy and autonomy, for
people who cannot live with family or alone.

IV. The treatment is considered therapeutic and voluntary (exceptions are strictly
regulated and delimited).

TREATMENTS

1. William Battie (1704-1776). Initiated the use of "therapeutic" establishments. In

those that provided medical treatment, he maintains the thesis that mental illness
was the result of an overexcitement of the senses or on the contrary of
insensitivity and differentiated its origin between internal and external causes.
His treatment consisted of hospitalization instead of a relaxed and quiet
atmosphere as well as having a daily routine and occupation.

2. The first biological treatments used excluding the induction of malaria in 1917 by
the German Julius von Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) are:

I. Insulin coma: It consists of the induction in a hypoglycemic coma of the psychotic

patient through the administration of large doses of insulin. Practiced by Manfred
Joshua Sake (1900-1957) in 1932.

II. Seizure therapy introduced by Von Meduna in 1934 by intravenous injection of

metrazole.

III. Electroconvulsive therapy: A procedure performed under general anesthesia that

involves passing small electrical currents through the brain to intentionally trigger a
brief seizure. This therapy causes changes in brain neurochemistry that can quickly
reverse the symptoms of some mental illnesses.

IV. Lobotomy: A type of surgery called psychosurgery, based on the idea that
mental illness can be cured by changing the way the brain works. Doctors believed
that changing connections with the frontal lobes could change emotions without
affecting intelligence. First practiced in 1936 by Egas Moniz (1874-1955) it was
quickly introduced in the United States by Walter Freeman and James Watt where
the number of operations grew dramatically in the following years, began to decline
very rapidly from 1950. (At present its use in the treatment of psychoses is
practically nil).
V. Electroconvulsive therapy: It is a psychiatric treatment in which a generalized
seizure is electrically induced to control refractory mental disorders. They are
usually applied from 70 to 120 volts externally. In 1938 Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963)
used for the first time the practice of electroshock in a patient diagnosed with
schizophrenia in collaboration with Lucio Bini. His work had a great influence and
development in the following years. (This treatment was widely accepted between
1940 and 1950 its use began to decline from 1950 with the appearance of
antipsychotics and antidepressants).

VI. The discovery of chlorpromazine by French scientists Pierre Deniker, Henri

Leborit and Jean Delay in 1950 introduces us to the era of psychotropic drugs.
These drugs demonstrated their effectiveness in controlling the so-called positive
symptoms of schizophrenia and other psychoses, although against them we also
have to cite their side effects that endangered their use.

As a conclusion I have the knowledge that exists today about its origin and the
Spanish laws and directives of the European Union, which protect all citizens from
discrimination, make it essential that we do not prolong in the twenty-first century
the treatment that has been inflicted over time on those suffering from these
diseases. Eliminating discrimination will not only comply with current legislation, but
will also help the social integration of these people.