Types of Mental Health Disorders and Their Symptoms

Many people live with a mental disorder across the world. Mental health conditions can be manifested in multiple ways that affect our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Moreover, mental health disorders can disturb our personal lives and emotional stability. It is necessary to keep your mental health stable for a balanced and happy life. To make sense of this vast landscape, let’s understand what a mental disorder is, its types, and symptoms.

What is a Mental Health Disorder?

A mental health disorder is also called a psychiatric disorder. It is a condition that affects your way of thinking and behaviour, and also influences your emotions. You may have uncontrolled thoughts, anxious and empty feelings, or trouble sleeping and eating. These can affect your functionality and disturb your daily life. Mental health disorders are categorized into several different types.

The research from the National Institute of Mental Health shows that more than one in five adults lives with a mental condition in the USA. It reflects the pervasive impact of mental health challenges in the USA.

What are the Early Warning Signs of Mental Health Problems?

When you are not sure if you or someone close to you is experiencing a mental health condition? You need to understand and observe the early signs of mental health disorders. The following are some early warning signs that a person is living with any mental health condition.

• Eating or sleeping too much or too little.
• Pulling away from people and usual activities.
• Having low or no energy.
• Feeling numb or as if nothing matters.
• Having unexplained aches and pains.
• Feeling helpless or hopeless.
• Smoking, drinking, or using drugs more than usual.
• Feeling confused, forgetting things, angry, upset, worried, or even scared.
• Shouting or fighting with family and friends.
• Experiencing severe mood swings that cause problems in relationships.
• Repetitive thoughts and memories you can’t get out of your head, even when you try.
• Hearing voices or believing things that are not true.
• Thinking of harming yourself or others.
• Unable to perform daily tasks, such as caring for your kids, concentrating on work, or attending school.

Types of Mental Health Disorders and Symptoms?

There are multiple types of mental health disorders. But the following are the most common disorders.

Anxiety Disorder

It is normal to experience occasional anxiety in certain situations. But individuals with an anxiety disorder excessively and persistently feel worried and fearful about their everyday situations. Often, it includes repetitive and sudden episodes of intense anxiety and fear that peak within minutes. Moreover, these feelings of panic and anxiety are not about the real danger, but are difficult to control and disturb daily functioning. You may try to prevent these feelings by avoiding places and situations that trigger anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety disorder may start during childhood or in early teens and continue into adulthood.

The following are further types of anxiety disorders,

• Agoraphobia, a type of anxiety disorder. A person with agoraphobia fears and avoids situations and places that trigger anxiety and make them feel trapped and embarrassed.
• Anxiety disorder due to a medical condition, in this case, a person feels excessive anxiety that is due to a physical health problem.
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) includes persistent worry about activities, even routine issues, which is difficult to control.
• Panic Disorder involves persistent, sudden, intense anxiety with symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, or heart palpitations.
• Selective Mutism refers to the failure of children to speak in certain situations, such as in school.
• Separation Anxiety Disorder is a childhood mental condition that is caused by excessive anxiety after separation from parents or any other who has parental roles.
• Social Anxiety Disorder includes a high level of anxiety and fear of social situations.
• Specific Phobias are a major anxiety and fear of certain objects and situations, such as airplanes.

Symptoms of Anxiety Disorder

Common symptoms of anxiety disorder are:

• Feelings of nervousness, restlessness, or tension.
• Fear of nearing danger, panic, or doom.
• Racing or increased heart rate.
• Fast Breathing.
• Sweating.
• Shaking.
• Feeling weakness or tiredness.
• Trouble concentrating or overthinking about the present worry.
• Trouble sleeping due to continuous worry.
• Upset stomach or other problems with digestion.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

OCD is a mental health disorder that develops unwanted thoughts and fears. These obsessive thoughts can lead to chronic behaviours, which are called compulsions. It interferes with and disturbs your daily life responsibilities. A person with OCD may focus on different worries and behaviours, such as a fear of germs or contamination. They may need things to feel symmetrical or just right, experience unwanted intrusive thoughts, or want to collect or save different items. Psychotherapy is the most effective option to treat OCD.

The two main causes of OCD are,

• Obsession, which is unwanted, intrusive thoughts, or images in the mind that cause extreme anxiety.
• Compulsions refer to repetitive actions or thoughts you feel you must engage in to get rid of the obsessions.

Symptoms of OCD

Obsessive symptoms are,

• Fear of germs, dirt, body fluids, and contamination.
• Fear of harm or hurting yourself or others.
• A strong need to be perfect or a fear of making mistakes.
• Doubting your partner’s love or affection in a relationship.
• Always fearing you will be the reason for something terrible.

Compulsive Symptoms are,

• Rearranging items in a specific order until it looks right.
• Constantly checking that you did not make any mistakes, everyone around you is safe, or making sure nothing bad happens.
• Although there is no logical connection, you believe that your thoughts can cause real-life events.
• You keep saying specific words and phrases in your head.
• Repeating things over and over again, such as repeatedly washing your hands or household objects, out of fear of germs.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is also called manic depression. It is a mental health condition that causes extreme shifts in mood. These shifts are emotional highs, known as mania or hypomania, and lows, known as depression. Although hypomania is less extreme than mania.

Additionally, you may feel sad or hopeless and lose interest or pleasure in most activities in depression. On the other hand, when your mood shifts to mania or hypomania, you may feel very excited and full of energy, or unusually irritable. These mood swings can disrupt sleep, energy level, behavior, and the ability to think.

Your mood swings from depression to mania may occur rarely or multiple times a year. Between these mood swings, some people experience long periods of emotional stability. Others may frequently experience mood shifts from depression to mania or may be both at the same time. Although bipolar disorder is a lifelong condition, the mood swings can be managed with the right treatment.

There are some major bipolar disorder types:

• Bipolar I disorder.
• Bipolar II disorder.
• Cyclothymia.

Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder

• Extreme sadness or despair.
• Loss of interest in activities you enjoyed before.
• Feeling unworthy and guilty.
• Increased or reduced appetite.
• Thoughts of suicide.
• Low concentration.
• Feeling tired.
• Racing thoughts.

Mood Disorders

A person with a mood disorder faces emotional challenges. In this disorder, you will experience a long period of extreme happiness, extreme sadness, or both. Certain mood disorders include other continuous emotions, such as feeling angry or irritated. Mood changes are normal, but for a mood disorder diagnosis, symptoms must continue for several weeks or longer. Mood disorders affect your behaviour, which disrupts your daily activities.

While many people experience emotional ups and downs, these extreme emotional states can last for an extended time in a person with a mood disorder.

The most common mood disorders include:

• Depression
• Bipolar disorder
• Dysthymic disorder

Symptoms of Mood Disorder

General mood disorder symptoms include:

• Most of the time, feeling sad or maybe everyday.
• Feeling inactive due to a lack of energy.
• Feeling hopelessness or unworthiness.
• Loss of interest in enjoyable activities.
• Suicidal thoughts
• Difficulty focusing and concentrating.
• Disrupted sleeping schedule.
• Eating too much or too little.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Mental health attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects your brain’s functioning. According to its name, it does not mean that you lack attention. In fact, it means you find it hard to control your attention and concentrate on your tasks. Moreover, it causes symptoms like trouble sitting still, impulsive behaviours, and difficulty focusing. On the other hand, it also allows you to get in the zone and concentrate on things you are interested in.

ADHD symptoms start in childhood and can continue into adulthood. But it is not diagnosed in some people until they become adults. Proper treatment and medications can help manage the symptoms of ADHD.

Four further types of ADHD and their symptoms include:

• Inattentive ADHD symptoms involve difficulty focusing, finishing tasks, and staying organized. With this type, you may have a few or no hyperactivity symptoms.
• Hyperactive-impulsive ADHD is a type in which you experience difficulty sitting still or having quiet time. You feel excessive energy and are extremely talkative, and may also interrupt others and act without thinking first.
• Combined presentation is the most common type of ADHD. Most people are associated with this condition, in which you have many inattentive symptoms and hyperactive-impulsive symptoms.
• Unspecified presentation is a type in which you have severe symptoms that interfere with your life routine. But your symptoms are not like the criteria for the types listed above. In this case, mental health specialists named it as unspecified ADHD.

Major Depressive Disorder

Major depressive disorder is also called clinical depression. It is a mood disorder that causes chronic feelings of sadness and loss of interest. This disorder affects feelings and behaviours that result in many emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble with daily functioning and feel like life is not worth living. It requires long-term treatment to treat major depressive disorder. Most people with depression have overcome their symptoms with medications and the right therapies.

Symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder

Clinical depression symptoms include:

• Feelings of sadness, emptiness, or hopelessness.
• Aggressive behaviour, irritability, or frustration, even over small things.
• Zero interest in pleasurable and all normal activities.
• Disturbed sleep schedule, including insomnia or sleeping too much.
• Exhaustion and lack of energy, even small tasks take extra effort.
• Eating less or increased cravings for food.
• Extreme anxiety or restlessness.
• Slow thinking, speaking, or body movements.
• Feelings of worthlessness, absorbed in past failures, or self-blaming.
• Trouble thinking straight, concentrating, making decisions, and remembering things
• Recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal thoughts, or even suicide attempts.
• unexplainable physical issues, such as body pain or headaches

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops after you experience any traumatic event. It is a severe reaction to a traumatic event that causes negative symptoms related to that trauma. PTSD symptoms may start within the first few months after the traumatic event, but sometimes may not appear even years after the event. When symptoms appear, they cause problems in social or work situations and also affect daily activities.

PTSD Symptoms

Usually, PTSD symptoms are divided into four types: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in mood, and changes in physical reactions. These symptoms can be different from person to person and can change over time.

Intrusive memories Symptoms

• Unwanted, stressful memories of a traumatic event linger in your mind over and over again.
• Having a flashback of a traumatic event as if it is happening again
• Disturbing nightmares about a traumatic event.
• Extreme emotional stress or physical reactions to something that makes you remember that traumatic event.

Avoidance Symptoms

• Try escaping to think or talk about that trauma.
• Avoiding places, people, and activities that remind you of that event.

Symptoms of Negative Changes in Mood and Thinking

• Development of negative thoughts about yourself, other people, or the world.
• Negative emotions of fear, blame, guilt, anger, or shame.
• Having memory issues, including forgetting important aspects of a traumatic event.
• Feeling disconnected from friends and family.
• Uninterested in activities you enjoyed before that event.
• Feeling difficult to be positive.
• Feeling numb emotionally.

Symptoms of Changes in Emotional and Physical Reactions

• Being easily frightened.
• Always being guarded for danger.
• Self-destructive behavior, such as driving too fast.
• Experience trouble sleeping.
• Having a hard time concentrating.
• Aggressive behavior or irritability.
• Physical reactions, such as sweating, rapid breathing, or trembling.

Dissociative Disorder

Dissociative disorder is a mental health condition. People with dissociative disorder feel disconnected from their identity, memory, emotions, behaviour, and perceptions. Someone who experiences traumatic events will often have dissociation during or after the event for hours, days, or weeks. It is a complex and controversial mental problem and requires specific support and treatment. It is important to seek professional help when you feel symptoms of dissociation in yourself or a loved one.

Dissociative disorder is divided into three types:

• Dissociative Amnesia
• Depersonalization disorder
• Dissociative identity disorder

Symptoms of Dissociative Disorder

Symptoms and signs of dissociative disorder include:

• Feel disconnected from yourself and emotions.
• Problems in handling emotional intensity.
• Unexpected and sudden mood shifts, feeling very sad without any reason.
• Extreme anxiety or depression.
• Concentration problems.
• Feeling as though the world is not real or distorted.
• Memory problems that are not due to any medical illness or physical injury.
• Feeling forced to do certain behaviours.
• Memory gaps like you forgot something important about yourself.

Adjustment Disorders

Adjustment disorder is an excessive reaction to stress. It involves negative thoughts, intense emotions, and behaviour changes. This reaction to stressful change is unexpectedly extremely intense. It causes short-term symptoms that may make you react with more intensity. You may feel depressed or hopeless, may cry easily over things, may overindulge in risky things, or act impulsively.

The behaviour and feelings in adjustment disorder vary from person to person. Sometimes one event is the reason for symptoms, and other times multiple events that push you to a breaking point. It causes a lot of problems in your daily life.

Symptoms of Adjustment Disorder

There are different types of adjustment disorder with symptoms that include,

• Adjustment disorder with depressed mood: Lack of joy and feelings of sadness and hopelessness.
• Adjustment disorder with anxiety: Feelings of worry, anxiousness, overwhelming, trouble concentrating.
• Adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood: Mixed feelings of depression and anxiety.
• Adjustment disorder with disturbance of conduct: Behaviour change, acting rebelliously, recklessly, or impulsively.
• Adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance or emotions and conduct: Feeling anxious, depressed, and exhibiting behaviour issues.
• Adjustment disorder unspecified: Feeling physical problems like body aches, stomach issues, heart palpitations, headaches, or insomnia.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that affects the way one thinks, feels, and acts. A person with schizophrenia experiences delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking. The right treatment and therapy can reduce the symptoms, and continuous care and support are necessary.

Schizophrenia has further subtypes that include:

• Paranoid schizophrenia, feelings of intense suspicion, oppression, or grandiosity, or a mixture of these.
• Disorganized schizophrenia is characterized by incoherent thoughts, but not essentially delusional.
• Catatonic schizophrenia represents withdrawal, negative affects, and isolation, and disturbs the connection between your mind and action.
• Residual schizophrenia is a subtype in which delusions or hallucinations may go away, but it takes away motivation or interest in life.
• Schizoaffective disorder includes symptoms of both schizophrenia and a major mood disorder, such as depression.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has three types of symptoms: positive, negative, and cognitive.

Positive Symptoms

• Hallucination.
• Delusions.
• Disorganized behaviours, speech, or thinking.

Negative Symptoms

• Lack of interest.
• Anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure.
• Lack of emotional expressions.
• Social withdrawal
• Reduced speaking

Cognitive Symptoms

• Unable to concentrate.
• Memory problems.
• Poor executive functioning

Psychosis

Psychosis is a mental condition in which a person behaves disconnected from reality. They experience symptoms like hallucinations or delusions, such as immediate sights or sounds that are not real. Moreover, they may convey confidence in things that are known to be untrue. Some people may believe that they are on some kind of special mission or that they have special powers or knowledge that others do not hold.

Causes of Psychosis

Psychosis can be due to common symptoms of many mental health conditions, including:

• Schizophrenia.
• Brief psychotic disorder.
• Delusional disorder.
• Schizoaffective disorder.
• Schizophreniform disorder.
• Schizotypal (personality) disorder.
• Substance/medication-induced psychotic disorder.
• Psychotic disorder due to another medical condition.

Specific mood disorders also cause psychosis. Those include:

• Bipolar disorder.
• Major depression and related conditions.

Genetics and Mental Health Disorders

Mental health disorders are linked to heredity, but mental health is never determined by genetics alone. Mental conditions manifest as a result of the combined effects of our genetics and life experiences. We don’t actually inherit any mental condition itself, but we inherit the sensitivity to cope with the mental condition. We inherit genetic vulnerability according to our DNA. We can say that a person with a close family member experiencing a psychiatric disorder has a higher chance of experiencing a mental health condition.

When people who have inherited more vulnerability to develop mental problems experience certain situations in life, there is a higher chance that they will undergo a psychiatric disorder.

How to Treat Mental Health Disorders?

Many people diagnosed with mental health disorders reach strength and recovery by participating in individual or group treatments. There are various treatment options available to treat mental health. All you need to do is consult your mental health specialists to choose the treatment, or combination of treatments, that works best.

The most common treatments for mental health disorders are psychotherapy, medications, and a combination of both.

Psychotherapy

It is also known as talk therapy to treat mental health disorders by mental health specialists. Your psychiatrist helps you to explore thoughts and behaviors and improve your well-being through psychotherapy. Psychotherapy includes Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), Exposure Therapy, Group Therapy, etc. Medications alone do not manage symptoms. However, medications combined with psychotherapy are one of the most effective ways to recover from a mental health disorder.

Improve Your Mental Health At Advanced Health Preference Group

Mental health disorders are overwhelming to deal with, but they can be treated with the right support. If you or any of your loved ones are experiencing any mental health disorder symptoms, we are here to help.

The Advanced Health Preference Group is providing expert psychiatric services. We have a team of dedicated professionals who offer support with personalized treatments. Our mental health specialists are experts in treating all kinds of mental health disorders. You will get a safe and non-judgmental space with the care and support you need. We also offer a telepsychiatry treatment option, so you can have access to treatment easily from the comfort of your home.