Mental disorder, any illness with significant psychological or behavioral manifestations that is associated with either a painful or distressing symptom or an impairment in one or more important areas of functioning.
Mental disorders, in particular their consequences and their treatment, are of more concern and receive more attention now than in the past. Mental disorders have become a more prominent subject of attention for several reasons. They have always been common, but, with the eradication or successful treatment of many of the serious physical illnesses that formerly afflicted humans, mental illness has become a more noticeable cause of suffering and accounts for a higher proportion of those disabled by disease. Moreover, the public has come to expect the medical and mental health professions to help it obtain an improved quality of life in its mental as well as physical functioning. And indeed, there has been a proliferation of both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments. The transfer of many psychiatric patients, some still showing conspicuous symptoms, from mental hospitals into the community has also increased the public’s awareness of the importance and prevalence of mental illness.
There is no simple definition of mental disorder that is universally satisfactory. This is partly because mental states or behaviour that are viewed as abnormal in one culture may be regarded as normal or acceptable in another, and in any case it is difficult to draw a line clearly demarcating healthy from abnormal mental functioning.
A narrow definition of mental illness would insist upon the presence of organic disease of the brain, either structural or biochemical. An overly broad definition would define mental illness as simply being the lack or absence of mental health—that is to say, a condition of mental well-being, balance, and resilience in which the individual can successfully work and function and in which the individual can both withstand and learn to cope with the conflicts and stresses encountered in life. A more generally useful definition ascribes mental disorder to psychological, social, biochemical, or genetic dysfunctions or disturbances in the individual.
A mental illness can have an effect on every aspect of a person’s life, including thinking, feeling, mood, and outlook and such areas of external activity as family and marital life, sexual activity, work, recreation, and management of material affairs. Most mental disorders negatively affect how individuals feel about themselves and impair their capacity for participating in mutually rewarding relationships.
Psychopathology is the systematic study of the significant causes, processes, and symptomatic manifestations of mental disorders. The meticulous study, observation, and inquiry that characterize the discipline of psychopathology are, in turn, the basis for the practice of psychiatry (i.e., the science and practice of diagnosing and treating mental disorders as well as dealing with their prevention). Psychiatry, psychology, and related disciplines such as clinical psychology and counseling embrace a wide spectrum of techniques and approaches for treating mental illnesses. These include the use of psychoactive drugs to correct biochemical imbalances in the brain or otherwise to relieve depression, anxiety, and other painful emotional states.
Another important group of treatments is the psychotherapies, which seek to treat mental disorders by psychological means and which involve verbal communication between the patient and a trained person in the context of a therapeutic interpersonal relationship between them. Different modes of psychotherapy focus variously on emotional experience, cognitive processing, and overt behaviour.
This article discusses the types, causes, and treatment of mental disorders. Neurological diseases (see neurology) with behavioral manifestations are treated in nervous system disease. Alcoholism and other substance use disorders are discussed in alcoholism and drug use. Disorders of sexual functioning and behaviour are treated in sexual behaviour, human. Tests used to evaluate mental health and functioning are discussed in psychological testing. The various theories of personality structure and dynamics are treated in personality, while human emotion and motivation are discussed in emotion and motivation. See also personality disorder; psychopharmacology; psychotherapy.
Types and causes of mental disorders
Classification and epidemiology
Psychiatric classification attempts to bring order to the enormous diversity of mental symptoms, syndromes, and illnesses that are encountered in clinical practice. Epidemiology is the measurement of the prevalence, or frequency of occurrence, of these psychiatric disorders in different human populations.
Diagnosis is the process of identifying an illness by studying its signs and symptoms and by considering the patient’s history. Much of this information is gathered by the mental health practitioner (e.g., psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist, social worker, or counselor) during initial interviews with the patient, who describes the main complaints and symptoms and any past ones and briefly gives a personal history and current situation. The practitioner may administer any of several psychological tests to the patient and may supplement these with a physical and a neurological examination. These data, along with the practitioner’s own observations of the patient and of the patient’s interaction with the practitioner, form the basis for a preliminary diagnostic assessment. For the practitioner, diagnosis involves finding the most prominent or significant symptoms, on the basis of which the patient’s disorder can be assigned to a category as a first stage toward treatment. Diagnosis is as important in mental health treatment as it is in medical treatment.
Classification systems in psychiatry aim to distinguish groups of patients who share the same or related clinical symptoms in order to provide an appropriate therapy and accurately predict the prospects of recovery for any individual member of that group. Thus, a diagnosis of depression, for example, would lead the practitioner to consider antidepressant drugs when preparing a course of treatment.
The diagnostic terms of psychiatry have been introduced at various stages of the discipline’s development and from very different theoretical standpoints. Sometimes two words with quite different derivations have come to mean almost the same thing—for example, dementia praecox and schizophrenia. Sometimes a word, such as hysteria, carries many different meanings depending on the psychiatrist’s theoretical orientation.
Psychiatry is hampered by the fact that the cause of many mental illnesses is unknown, and so convenient diagnostic distinctions cannot be made among such illnesses as they can, for instance, in infectious medicine, where infection with a specific type of bacterium is a reliable indicator for a diagnosis of tuberculosis. But the greatest difficulties presented by mental disorders as far as classification and diagnosis are concerned are that the same symptoms are often found in patients with different or unrelated disorders and a patient may show a mix of symptoms properly belonging to several different disorders. Thus, although the categories of mental illness are defined according to symptom patterns, course, and outcome, the illnesses of many patients constitute intermediate cases between such categories, and the categories themselves may not necessarily represent distinct disease entities and are often poorly defined.
The two most frequently used systems of psychiatric classification are the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), produced by the World Health Organization, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), produced by the American Psychiatric Association. The 10th revision of the former, published in 1992, is widely used in western Europe and other parts of the world for epidemiological and administrative purposes. Its nomenclature is deliberately conservative in conception so that it can be used by clinicians and mental health care systems in different countries. The 11th revision (ICD-11) was slated for publication in 2018. The DSM, by contrast, has undergone five revisions since its introduction in 1952; the most recent version, DSM-5, was presented in 2013. The DSM differs from the ICD in its introduction of precisely described criteria for each diagnostic category; its categorizations are based upon the detailed description of symptoms.
The DSM is the standard resource in the United States, though it has been widely used worldwide. Its detailed descriptions of diagnostic criteria have been useful in eradicating the inconsistencies of earlier classifications. However, there are still some major problems in its everyday clinical use. Chief among them is the DSM’s innovative and controversial abandonment of the general categories of psychosis and neurosis in its classificatory scheme. These terms have been and still are widely used to distinguish between classes of mental disorders, though there are various mental illnesses, such as personality disorders, that cannot be classified as either psychoses or neuroses. Furthermore, its use of broad diagnostic criteria and its lack of inclusion of diagnostic criteria based on known biological factors have been sources of criticism.
Psychoses are major mental illnesses that are characterized by severe symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disturbances of the thinking process, and defects of judgment and insight. Persons with psychoses exhibit a disturbance or disorganization of thought, emotion, and behaviour so profound that they are often unable to function in everyday life and may be incapacitated or disabled. Such individuals are often unable to realize that their subjective perceptions and feelings do not correlate with objective reality, a phenomenon evinced by persons with psychoses who do not know or will not believe that they are ill despite the distress they feel and their obvious confusion concerning the outside world. Traditionally, the psychoses have been broadly divided into organic and functional psychoses. Organic psychoses were believed to result from a physical defect of or damage to the brain. Functional psychoses were believed to have no physical brain disease evident upon clinical examination. Much research suggests that this distinction between organic and functional is probably inaccurate. Most psychoses are now believed to result from some structural or biochemical change in the brain.
Neuroses, or psychoneuroses, are less-serious disorders in which people may experience negative feelings such as anxiety or depression. Their functioning may be significantly impaired, but personality remains relatively intact, the capacity to recognize and objectively evaluate reality is maintained, and they are basically able to function in everyday life. In contrast to people with psychoses, neurotic patients know or can be made to realize that they are ill, and they usually want to get well and return to a normal state. Their chances for recovery are better than those of persons with psychoses. The symptoms of neurosis may sometimes resemble the coping mechanisms used in everyday life by most people, but in neurotics these defensive reactions are inappropriately severe or prolonged in response to an external stress. Anxiety disorders, phobic disorder (exhibited as unrealistic fear or dread), conversion disorder (formerly known as hysteria), obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depressive disorders have been traditionally classified as neuroses.
Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of disease in different populations. Prevalence denotes the number of cases of a condition present at a particular time or over a specified period, while incidence denotes the number of new cases occurring in a defined time period. Epidemiology is also concerned with the social, economic, or other contexts in which mental illnesses arise.
The understanding of mental disorders is aided by knowledge of the rate and frequency with which they occur in different societies and cultures. Looking at the worldwide prevalence of mental disorders reveals many surprising findings. It is remarkable, for instance, that the lifetime risk of developing schizophrenia, even in widely different cultures, is approximately 1 percent.
Gradual historical changes in the incidence and prevalence of particular disorders have often been described, but it is very difficult to obtain firm evidence that such changes have actually occurred. On the other hand, prevalence has been seen to increase for a few syndromes because of general changes in living conditions over time. For example, dementia inevitably develops in some 20 percent of those persons over age 80, so, with the increase in life expectancy common to developed countries, the number of people with dementia is bound to increase. There also seems to be some evidence of an increased prevalence of mood disorders over the past century.
Several large-scale epidemiological studies have been conducted to determine the incidence and prevalence of mental disorders in the general population. Simple statistics based on those people actually under treatment for mental disorders cannot be relied upon in making such a determination, because the number of those who have sought treatment is substantially smaller than the actual number of people afflicted with mental disorders, many of whom do not seek professional treatment. Moreover, surveys to determine incidence and prevalence depend for their statistics on the clinical judgment of the survey takers, which can always be fallible because there are no objective tests for the assessment of mental illness. Given such objections, one ambitious study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States examined thousands of persons in several American localities and yielded the following results concerning the prevalence of mental disorders in the general population. About 1 percent of those surveyed were found to have schizophrenia, more than 9 percent had depression, and about 13 percent had phobias or other anxiety disorders.
There is a relatively strong epidemiological association between socioeconomic class and the occurrence of certain types of mental disorders and of general patterns of mental health. One study found that the lower the socioeconomic class, the greater the prevalence of psychotic disorders; schizophrenia was found to be 11 times more frequent among the lowest of the five classes surveyed (unskilled manual workers) than among the highest class (professionals). (Anxiety disorders were found to be more common among the middle class, however.) Two possible explanations for the elevated frequency of schizophrenia among the poor would be that persons with schizophrenia “drift downward” to the lowest socioeconomic class because they are impaired by their illness or alternatively that unfavourable sociocultural conditions create circumstances that help induce the illness.
The manifestation of particular psychiatric symptoms is sometimes closely associated with particular epochs or periods in life. Childhood and adolescence may produce a variety of psychiatric symptoms peculiar to those periods of life. Anorexia nervosa, several types of schizophrenia, drug abuse, and bipolar disorder often first appear during adolescence or in young adult life. Alcohol dependence and its consequences, paranoid schizophrenia, and repeated attacks of depression are more likely to occur in middle age. Involutional melancholia and presenile dementias typically occur in late middle age, while senile and arteriosclerotic dementias are characteristic of the elderly.
There are also marked sex differences in the incidence of certain types of mental illness. For instance, anorexia nervosa is 20 times more common in girls than in boys; men tend to develop schizophrenia at a younger age than women; depression is more common in women than in men; and many sexual deviations occur almost exclusively in men.
Theories of causation
Very often the etiology, or cause, of a particular type of mental disorder is unknown or is understood only to a very limited extent. The situation is complicated by the fact that a mental disorder such as schizophrenia may be caused by a combination and interaction of several factors, including a probable genetic predisposition to develop the disease, a postulated biochemical imbalance in the brain, and a cluster of stressful life events that help to precipitate the actual onset of the illness. The predominance of these and other factors probably varies from person to person in schizophrenia. A similarly complex interaction of constitutional, developmental, and social factors can influence the formation of mood and anxiety disorders.
No single theory of causation can explain all mental disorders or even all those of a particular type. Moreover, the same type of disorder may have different causes in different persons: e.g., an obsessive-compulsive disorder may have its origins in a biochemical imbalance, in an unconscious emotional conflict, in faulty learning processes, or in a combination of these. The fact that quite different therapeutic approaches can produce equal improvements in different patients with the same type of disorder underscores the complex and ambiguous nature of the causes of mental illness. The major theoretical and research approaches to the causation of mental disorders are treated below.
Organic and hereditary etiologies
Organic explanations of mental illness have usually been genetic, biochemical, neuropathological, or a combination of these.
The study of the genetic causes of mental disorders involves both the laboratory analysis of the human genome and the statistical analysis of the frequency of a particular disorder’s occurrence among individuals who share related genes—i.e., family members and particularly twins. Family risk studies compare the observed frequency of occurrence of a mental illness in close relatives of the patient with its frequency in the general population. First-degree relatives (parents, siblings, and children) share 50 percent of their genetic material with the patient, and higher rates of the illness in these relatives than expected indicate a possible genetic factor. In twin studies the frequency of occurrence of the illness in both members of pairs of identical (monozygous) twins is compared with its frequency in both members of a pair of fraternal (dizygous) twins. A higher concordance for disease among the identical than the fraternal twins suggests a genetic component. Further information on the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors accrues from comparing identical twins reared together with those reared apart. Adoption studies comparing adopted children whose biological parents had the illness with those whose parents did not can also be useful in separating biological from environmental influences.
Such studies have demonstrated a clear role for genetic factors in the causation of schizophrenia. When one parent is found to have the disorder, the probability of that person’s children developing schizophrenia is at least 10 times higher (about a 12 percent risk probability) than it is for children in the general population (about a 1 percent risk probability). If both parents have schizophrenia, the probability of their children developing the disorder is anywhere from 35 to 65 percent. If one member of a pair of fraternal twins develops schizophrenia, there is about a 12 percent chance that the other twin will too. If one member of a pair of identical twins has schizophrenia, the other identical twin has at least a 40 to 50 percent chance of developing the disorder. Although genetic factors seem to play a less significant role in the causation of other psychotic and personality disorders, studies have demonstrated a probable role for genetic factors in the causation of many mood disorders and some anxiety disorders.
If a mental disease is caused by a biochemical abnormality, investigation of the brain at the site where the biochemical imbalance occurs should show neurochemical differences from normal. In practice such a simplistic approach is fraught with practical, methodological, and ethical difficulties. The living human brain is not readily accessible to direct investigation, and the dead brain undergoes chemical change; moreover, findings of abnormalities in cerebrospinal fluid, blood, or urine may have no relevance to the question of a presumed biochemical imbalance in the brain. It is difficult to study human mental illnesses using animals as analogs, because most mental disorders either do not occur or are not recognizable in animals. Even when biochemical abnormalities have been found in persons with mental disorders, it is difficult to know whether they are the cause or the result of the illness, or of its treatment, or of other consequences. Despite these problems, progress has been made in unraveling the biochemistry of mood disorders, schizophrenia, and some of the dementias.
Certain drugs have been demonstrated to have beneficial effects upon mental illnesses. Antidepressant, antipsychotic, and antianxiety drugs are thought to achieve their therapeutic results by the selective inhibition or enhancement of the quantities, action, or breakdown of neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters are a group of chemical agents that are released by neurons (nerve cells) to stimulate neighbouring neurons, thus allowing impulses to be passed from one cell to the next throughout the nervous system. Neurotransmitters play a key role in transmitting nerve impulses across the microscopic gap (synaptic cleft) that exists between neurons. The release of such neurotransmitters is stimulated by the electrical activity of the cell. Norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine, and serotonin are among the principal neurotransmitters. Some neurotransmitters excite or activate neurons, while others act as inhibiting substances. Abnormally low or high concentrations of neurotransmitters at sites in the brain are thought to change the synaptic activities of neurons, thus ultimately leading to the disturbances of mood, emotion, or thought found in various mental disorders.
In the past the postmortem study of the brain revealed information upon which great advances in understanding the etiology of neurological and some mental disorders were based, leading to German psychiatrist Wilhelm Griesinger’s postulate “All mental illness is disease of the brain.” The application of the principles of pathology to general paresis, one of the most common conditions found in mental hospitals in the late 19th century, resulted in the discovery that this was a form of neurosyphilis and was caused by infection with the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum. The examination of the brains of patients with other forms of dementia has given useful information concerning other causes of this syndrome—for example, Alzheimer disease and arteriosclerosis. The pinpointing of abnormalities of specific areas of the brain has aided understanding of some abnormal mental functions, such as disturbances of memory and speech disorders. Recent advances in neuroimaging techniques have expanded the ability to investigate brain abnormalities in patients with a wide variety of mental illnesses, eliminating the need for postmortem studies.
In the first half of the 20th century, theories of the etiology of mental disorders, especially of neuroses and personality disorders, were dominated in the United States by Freudian psychoanalysis and the derivative theories of the post-Freudians (see Freud, Sigmund). In western Europe the influence of Freudian theory upon psychiatric theory diminished after World War II.
Theories of personality development
Freudian and other psychodynamic theories view neurotic symptoms as arising from intrapsychic conflict—i.e., the existence of conflicting motives, drives, impulses, and feelings held within various components of the mind. Central to psychoanalytic theory is the postulated existence of the unconscious, which is that part of the mind whose processes and functions are inaccessible to the individual’s conscious awareness or scrutiny. One of the functions of the unconscious is thought to be that of a repository for traumatic memories, feelings, ideas, wishes, and drives that are threatening, abhorrent, anxiety-provoking, or socially or ethically unacceptable to the individual. These mental contents may at some time be pushed out of conscious awareness but remain actively held in the unconscious. This process is a defense mechanism for protecting the individual from the anxiety or other psychic pain associated with those contents and is known as repression. The repressed mental contents held in the unconscious retain much of the psychic energy or power that was originally attached to them, however, and they can continue to influence significantly the mental life of the individual even though (or because) a person is no longer aware of them.
The natural tendency for repressed drives or feelings, according to this theory, is to reach conscious awareness so that the individual can seek the gratification, fulfillment, or resolution of them. But this threatened release of forbidden impulses or memories provokes anxiety and is seen as threatening, and a variety of defense mechanisms may then come into play to provide relief from the state of psychic conflict. Through reaction formation, projection, regression, sublimation, rationalization, and other defense mechanisms, some component of the unwelcome mental contents can emerge into consciousness in a disguised or attenuated form, thus providing partial relief to the individual. Later, perhaps in adult life, some event or situation in the person’s life triggers the abnormal discharge of the pent-up emotional energy in the form of neurotic symptoms in a manner mediated by defense mechanisms. Such symptoms can form the basis of neurotic disorders such as conversion and somatoform disorders (see below somatoform disorders), anxiety disorders, obsessional disorders, and depressive disorders. Since the symptoms represent a compromise within the mind between letting the repressed mental contents out and continuing to deny all conscious knowledge of them, the particular character and aspects of an individual’s symptoms and neurotic concerns bear an inner meaning that symbolically represents the underlying intrapsychic conflict. Psychoanalysis and other dynamic therapies help a person achieve a controlled and therapeutic recovery that is based on a conscious awareness of repressed mental conflicts along with an understanding of their influence on past history and present difficulties. These steps are associated with the relief of symptoms and improved mental functioning.
Freudian theory views childhood as the primary breeding ground of neurotic conflicts. This is because children are relatively helpless and are dependent on their parents for love, care, security, and support and because their psychosexual, aggressive, and other impulses are not yet integrated into a stable personality framework. The theory posits that children lack the resources to cope with emotional traumas, deprivations, and frustrations; if these develop into unresolved intrapsychic conflicts that the young person holds in abeyance through repression, there is an increased likelihood that insecurity, unease, or guilt will subtly influence the developing personality, thereby affecting the person’s interests, attitudes, and ability to cope with later stresses.
Psychoanalytic theory’s emphasis on the unconscious mind and its influence on human behaviour resulted in a proliferation of other, related theories of causation incorporating—but not limited to—basic psychoanalytic precepts. Most subsequent psychotherapies have stressed in their theories of causation aspects of earlier, maladaptive psychological development that had been missed or underemphasized by orthodox psychoanalysis, or they have incorporated insights taken from learning theory. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, for instance, concentrated on the individual’s need for spiritual development and concluded that neurotic symptoms could arise from a lack of self-fulfillment in this regard. Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler emphasized the importance of feelings of inferiority and the unsatisfactory attempts to compensate for it as important causes of neurosis. Neo-Freudian authorities such as Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm modified Freudian theory by emphasizing social relationships and cultural and environmental factors as being important in the formation of mental disorders.
More-modern psychodynamic theories have moved away from the idea of explaining and treating neurosis on the basis of a defect in a single psychological system and have instead adopted a more complex notion of multiple causes, including emotional, psychosexual, social, cultural, and existential ones. A notable trend was the incorporation of approaches derived from theories of learning. Such psychotherapies emphasized the acquired faulty mental processes and maladaptive behavioral responses that act to sustain neurotic symptoms, thereby directing interest toward the patient’s extant circumstances and learned responses to those conditions as a causative factor in mental illness. These approaches marked a convergence of psychoanalytic theory and behavioral theory, especially with regard to each theory’s view of disease causation.
Behavioral theories for the causation of mental disorders, especially neurotic symptoms, are based upon learning theory, which was in turn largely derived from the study of the behaviour of animals in laboratory settings. Most important theories in this area arose out of the work of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and several American psychologists, such as Edward L. Thorndike, Clark L. Hull, John B. Watson, Edward C. Tolman, and B.F. Skinner. In the classical Pavlovian model of conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus is followed by an appropriate response; for example, food placed in a dog’s mouth is followed by the dog salivating. If a bell is rung just before food is offered to a dog, eventually the dog will salivate at the sound of the bell only, even though no food is offered. Because the bell could not originally evoke salivation in the dog (and hence was a neutral stimulus) but came to evoke salivation because it was repeatedly paired with the offering of food, it is called a conditioned stimulus. The dog’s salivation at the sound of the bell alone is called a conditioned response. If the conditioned stimulus (the bell) is no longer paired with the unconditioned stimulus (the food), extinction of the conditioned response gradually occurs (the dog ceases to salivate at the sound of the bell alone).
Behavioral theories for the causation of mental disorders rest largely upon the assumption that the symptoms or symptomatic behaviour found in persons with various neuroses (particularly phobias and other anxiety disorders) can be regarded as learned behaviours that have been built up into conditioned responses. In the case of phobias, for example, a person who has once been exposed to an inherently frightening situation afterward experiences anxiety even at neutral objects that were merely associated with that situation at the time but that should not reasonably produce anxiety. Thus, a child who has had a frightening experience with a bird may subsequently have a fear response to the sight of feathers. The neutral object alone is enough to arouse anxiety, and the person’s subsequent effort to avoid that object is a learned behavioral response that is self-reinforcing, since the person does indeed procure a reduction of anxiety by avoiding the feared object and is thus likely to continue to avoid it in the future. It is only by confronting the object that the individual can eventually lose the irrational, association-based fear of it.
Major diagnostic categories
Organic mental disorders
This category includes both those psychological or behavioral abnormalities that arise from structural disease of the brain and also those that arise from brain dysfunction caused by disease outside the brain. These conditions differ from those of other mental illnesses in that they have a definite and ascertainable cause—i.e., brain disease. However, the importance of the distinction (between organic and functional) has become less clear as research has demonstrated that brain abnormalities are associated with many psychiatric illnesses. When possible, treatment is aimed at both the symptoms and the underlying physical dysfunction in the brain.
There are several types of psychiatric syndromes that clearly arise from organic brain disease, the chief among them being dementia and delirium. Dementia is a gradual and progressive loss of intellectual abilities such as thinking, remembering, paying attention, judging, and perceiving, without an accompanying disturbance of consciousness. The syndrome may also be marked by the onset of personality changes. Dementia usually manifests as a chronic condition that worsens over the long term. Delirium is a diffuse or generalized intellectual impairment marked by a clouded or confused state of consciousness, an inability to attend to one’s surroundings, difficulty in thinking coherently, a tendency to perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, and difficulty in sleeping. Delirium is generally an acute condition. Amnesia (a gross loss of recent memory and of time sense without other intellectual impairment) is another specific psychological impairment associated with organic brain disease.
Steps toward the diagnosis of suspected organic disorders include obtaining a full medical history of the patient followed by a detailed examination of the patient’s mental state, with additional tests for particular functions as necessary. A physical examination is also performed with special attention to the central nervous system. In order to determine whether a metabolic or other biochemical imbalance is causing the condition, blood and urine tests, liver function tests, thyroid function tests, and other evaluations may be performed. Chest and skull X-rays may be taken, and computed tomography (CT) scanning or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be used to reveal focal or generalized brain disease. Electroencephalography (EEG) may show localized abnormalities in the electrical conduction of the brain caused by a lesion. Detailed psychological testing may reveal more-specific perceptual, memory, or other disabilities.
Senile and presenile dementia
In these dementias there is a progressive intellectual impairment that proceeds to lethargy, inactivity, and gross physical deterioration and eventually to death within a few years. Presenile dementias are arbitrarily defined as those that begin in persons under age 65. In old age the most common causes of dementia are Alzheimer disease and cerebral arteriosclerosis. Dementia from Alzheimer disease usually begins in people over age 65 and is more common in women than in men. It begins with incidences of forgetfulness, which become more frequent and serious; the disturbances of memory, personality, and mood progress steadily toward physical deterioration and death within a few years. In dementia caused by cerebral arteriosclerosis, areas of the brain are destroyed through a loss of blood supply caused by pieces of blood clots that become lodged in small arteries. The course of the illness is rapid, with periods of deterioration followed by periods of slight improvement. Death may be delayed slightly longer than with dementia from Alzheimer disease and often occurs from ischemic heart disease, causing a heart attack, or from massive cerebral infarction, causing a stroke.
Other causes of dementia include Pick disease, a rare inherited condition that occurs in women twice as often as in men, usually between the ages of 50 and 60; Huntington disease, an inherited disease that usually begins at about age 40 with involuntary movements and proceeds to dementia and death within 15 years; and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare brain condition that is caused by an abnormal form of protein called a prion. Dementia may also result from head injury, infection—e.g., with syphilis or encephalitis—various tumours, toxic conditions such as chronic alcoholism or heavy-metal poisoning, metabolic illnesses such as liver failure, reduced oxygen to the brain due to anemia or carbon monoxide poisoning, and the inadequate intake or metabolism of certain vitamins.
There is no specific treatment for the symptoms of dementia; the underlying physical cause needs to be identified and treated when possible. The goals of care of the individual with dementia are to relieve distress, prevent behaviour that might result in injury, and optimize remaining physical and psychological faculties.
Other organic syndromes
Damage to different areas of the brain may cause particular psychological symptoms. Damage to the frontal lobe of the brain may manifest itself in such disturbances of behaviour as loss of inhibitions, tactlessness, and overtalkativeness. Lesions of the parietal lobe may result in difficulties of speech and language or of the perception of space. Lesions of the temporal lobe may lead to emotional instability, aggressive behaviour, or difficulty with learning new information.
Delirium occurs secondarily to many other physical conditions such as drug intoxication or withdrawal, metabolic disorders (for example, liver failure or low blood sugar), infections such as pneumonia or meningitis, head injuries, brain tumours, epilepsy, or nutritional or vitamin deficiency. Clouding or confusion of consciousness and disturbances of thinking, behaviour, perception, and mood occur, with disorientation being prominent. Treatment is aimed at the underlying physical condition.
Substance abuse disorders
Substance abuse and substance dependence are two distinct disorders associated with the regular nonmedical use of psychoactive drugs. Substance abuse implies a sustained pattern of use resulting in impairment of the person’s social or occupational functioning. Substance dependence implies that a significant portion of a person’s activities are focused on the use of a particular drug or alcohol. Substance dependence likely leads to tolerance, in which markedly increased amounts of a drug (or other addictive substance) must be taken to achieve the same effect. Dependence is also characterized by withdrawal symptoms such as tremors, nausea, and anxiety, any of which might follow decreases in the dose of the substance or the cessation of drug use. (See chemical dependency.)
A variety of psychiatric conditions can result from the use of alcohol or other drugs. Mental states resulting from the ingestion of alcohol include intoxication, withdrawal, hallucinations, and amnesia. Similar syndromes may occur following the use of other drugs that affect the central nervous system (see drug use). Other drugs commonly used nonmedically to alter mood are barbiturates, opioids (e.g., heroin), cocaine, amphetamines, hallucinogens such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), marijuana, and tobacco. Treatment is directed at alleviating symptoms and preventing the patient’s further abuse of the substance.
The term schizophrenia was introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to describe what he considered to be a group of severe mental illnesses with related characteristics; it eventually replaced the earlier term dementia praecox, which the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin had first used in 1899 to distinguish the disease from what is now called bipolar disorder. Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit a wide variety of symptoms; thus, although different experts may agree that a particular individual suffers from the condition, they might disagree about which symptoms are essential in clinically defining schizophrenia.
The annual prevalence of schizophrenia—the number of cases, both old and new, on record in any single year—is between two and four per 1,000 persons. The lifetime risk of developing the illness is between seven and nine per 1,000. Schizophrenia is the single largest cause of admissions to mental hospitals, and it accounts for an even larger proportion of the permanent populations of such institutions. It is a severe and frequently chronic illness that typically first manifests itself during the teen years or early adulthood. More severe levels of impairment and personality disorganization occur in schizophrenia than in almost any other mental disorder.
The principal clinical signs of schizophrenia may include delusions, hallucinations, a loosening or incoherence of a person’s thought processes and train of associations, deficiencies in feeling appropriate or normal emotions, and a withdrawal from reality. A delusion is a false or irrational belief that is firmly held despite obvious or objective evidence to the contrary. The delusions of individuals with schizophrenia may be persecutory, grandiose, religious, sexual, or hypochondriacal in nature, or they may be concerned with other topics. Delusions of reference, in which the person attributes a special, irrational, and usually negative significance to other people, objects, or events, are common in the disease. Especially characteristic of schizophrenia are delusions in which the individual believes his thinking processes, body parts, or actions or impulses are controlled or dictated by some external force.
Hallucinations are false sensory perceptions that are experienced without an external stimulus but that nevertheless seem real to the person who is experiencing them. Auditory hallucinations, experienced as “voices” and characteristically heard commenting negatively about the affected individual in the third person, are prominent in schizophrenia. Hallucinations of touch, taste, smell, and bodily sensation may also occur. Disorders of thinking vary in nature but are quite common in schizophrenia. Thought disorders may consist of a loosening of associations, so that the speaker jumps from one idea or topic to another, unrelated one in an illogical, inappropriate, or disorganized way. At its most serious, this incoherence of thought extends into pronunciation itself, and the speaker’s words become garbled or unrecognizable. Speech may also be overly concrete and inexpressive; it may be repetitive, or, though voluble, it may convey little or no real information. Usually individuals with schizophrenia have little or no insight into their own condition and realize neither that they are suffering from a mental illness nor that their thinking is disordered.
Among the so-called negative symptoms of schizophrenia are a blunting or flattening of the person’s ability to experience (or at least to express) emotion, indicated by speaking in a monotone and by a peculiar lack of facial expressions. The person’s sense of self (i.e., of who he or she is) may be disturbed. A person with schizophrenia may be apathetic and may lack the drive and ability to pursue a course of action to its logical conclusion, may withdraw from society, become detached from others, or become preoccupied with bizarre or nonsensical fantasies. Such symptoms are more typical of chronic rather than of acute schizophrenia.
Prior to DSM-5, different types of schizophrenia were recognized as well as intermediate stages between the disease and other conditions. The five major types of schizophrenia recognized by the DSM-IV included the disorganized type, the catatonic type, the paranoid type, the undifferentiated type, and the residual type. Disorganized schizophrenia was characterized by inappropriate emotional responses, delusions or hallucinations, uncontrolled or inappropriate laughter, and incoherent thought and speech. Catatonic schizophrenia was marked by striking motor behaviour, such as remaining motionless in a rigid posture for hours or even days, and by stupor, mutism, or agitation. Paranoid schizophrenia was characterized by the presence of prominent delusions of a persecutory or grandiose nature; some patients were argumentative or violent. The undifferentiated type combined symptoms from the above three categories, and the residual type was marked by the absence of these distinct features. Moreover, the residual type, in which the major symptoms had abated, was a less severe diagnosis. Distinguishing between the different types clinically, however, was limited by poor validity and low reliability of existing diagnostic criteria. DSM-5 encouraged clinicians to assess patients based on symptom severity.
Course and prognosis
The course of schizophrenia is variable. Some individuals with schizophrenia continue to function fairly well and are able to live independently, some have recurrent episodes of the illness with some negative effect on their overall level of function, and some deteriorate into chronic schizophrenia with severe disability. The prognosis for individuals with schizophrenia has improved owing to the development of antipsychotic drugs and the expansion of community supportive measures.
About 5 to 10 percent of individuals with schizophrenia commit suicide. The prognosis for those with schizophrenia is poorer when the onset of the disease is gradual rather than sudden, when the affected individual is quite young at the onset, when the individual has suffered from the disease for a long time, when the individual exhibits blunted feelings or has displayed an abnormal personality previous to the onset of the disease, and when such social factors as never having been married, poor sexual adjustment, a poor employment record, or social isolation exist in the individual’s history.
An enormous amount of research has been performed to try to determine the causes of schizophrenia. Family, twin, and adoption studies provide strong evidence to support an important genetic contribution. Several studies in the early 21st century have found that children born to men older than age 50 are nearly three times more likely to have schizophrenia than those born to younger men. Stressful life events are known to trigger or quicken the onset of schizophrenia or to cause relapse. Some abnormal neurological signs have been found in individuals with schizophrenia, and it is possible that brain damage, perhaps occurring at birth, may be a cause in some cases. Other studies suggest that schizophrenia is caused by a virus or by abnormal activity of genes that govern the formation of nerve fibres in the brain. Various biochemical abnormalities also have been reported in persons with schizophrenia. There is evidence, for example, that the abnormal coordination of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, glutamate, and serotonin may be involved in the development of the disease.
Research also has been performed to determine whether the parental care used in the families of individuals with schizophrenia contributes to the development of the disease. There has also been extensive interest in such factors as social class, place of residence, migration, and social isolation. Neither family dynamics nor social disadvantage have been proved to be causative agents.
The most-successful treatment approaches combine the use of medications with supportive therapy. New “atypical” antipsychotic medications such as clozapine, risperidone, and olanzapine have proved effective in relieving or eliminating such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, thought disorders, agitation, and violent behaviour. These medications also have fewer side effects than the more-traditional antipsychotic medications. Long-term maintenance on such medications also reduces the rate of relapse. Psychotherapy, meanwhile, may help the affected individual to relieve feelings of helplessness and isolation, reinforce healthy or positive tendencies, distinguish psychotic perceptions from reality, and explore any underlying emotional conflicts that might be exacerbating the condition. Occupational therapy and regular visits from a social worker or psychiatric nurse may be beneficial. In addition, it is sometimes useful to counsel the live-in relatives of individuals with schizophrenia. Support groups for persons with schizophrenia and their families have become extremely important resources for dealing with the disorder.
Mood disorders include characteristics of either depression or mania or both, often in a fluctuating pattern. In their severer forms, these disorders include the bipolar disorders and major depressive disorder.
Major mood disorders
In general, two major, or severe, mood disorders are recognized: bipolar disorder and major depression.
Bipolar disorder (previously known as manic-depressive disorder) is characterized by an elated or euphoric mood, quickened thought and accelerated, loud, or voluble speech, overoptimism and heightened enthusiasm and confidence, inflated self-esteem, heightened motor activity, irritability, excitement, and a decreased need for sleep. Depressive mood swings typically occur more often and last longer than manic ones, though there are persons who have episodes only of mania. Individuals with bipolar disorder frequently also show psychotic symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, or grossly bizarre behaviour. These symptoms are generally experienced as discrete episodes of depression and then of mania that last for a few weeks or months, with intervening periods of complete normality. The sequence of depression and mania can vary widely from person to person and within a single individual, with either mood abnormality predominating in duration and intensity. Manic individuals may injure themselves, commit illegal acts, or suffer financial losses because of the poor judgment and risk-taking behaviour they display when in the manic state.
There are two types of bipolar disorders. The first, commonly known as bipolar 1, has several variations but is characterized primarily by mania, with or without depression. Its most common form involves recurrent episodes of mania and depression, often separated by relatively asymptomatic periods. The second type of bipolar disorder, typically called bipolar 2 (bipolar II), is characterized primarily by depression accompanied—often right before or right after an episode of depression—by a condition known as hypomania, which is a milder form of mania that is less likely to interfere with routine activities.
The lifetime risk for developing bipolar disorder is about 1 percent and is about the same for men and women. The onset of the illness often occurs at about age 30, and the illness persists over a long period. The predisposition to develop bipolar disorder is partly genetically inherited. Antipsychotic medications are used for the treatment of acute or psychotic mania. Mood-stabilizing agents such as lithium and several antiepileptic medications have proved effective in both treating and preventing recurrent attacks of mania.
Major depressive disorder is characterized by depression without manic symptoms. Episodes of depression in this disorder may or may not be recurrent. In addition, the depression can take on a number of different characteristics in different people, such as catatonic features, which include unusual motor or vocal behaviour, or melancholic features, which include profound lack of responsiveness to pleasure. People with major depression are considered to be at high risk of suicide.
Symptoms of major depressive disorder include a sad or hopeless mood, pessimistic thinking, a loss of enjoyment and interest in one’s usual activities and pastimes, reduced energy and vitality, increased fatigue, slowness of thought and action, change of appetite, and disturbed sleep. Depression must be distinguished from the grief and low spirits felt in reaction to the death of a loved one or some other unfortunate circumstance. The most dangerous consequence of severe depression is suicide. Depression is a much more common illness than mania, and there are indeed many sufferers from depression who have never experienced mania.
Major depressive disorder may occur as a single episode, or it may be recurrent. It may also exist with or without melancholia and with or without psychotic features. Melancholia implies the biological symptoms of depression: early-morning waking, daily variations of mood with depression most severe in the morning, loss of appetite and weight, constipation, and loss of interest in love and sex. Melancholia is a particular depressive syndrome that is relatively more responsive to somatic treatments such as antidepressant medications and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
It is estimated that women experience depression about twice as often as men. While the incidence of major depression in men increases with age, the peak for women is between ages 35 and 45. There is a serious risk of suicide with the illness; of those who have a severe depressive disorder, about one-sixth eventually kill themselves. Childhood traumas or deprivations, such as the loss of one’s parents while young, can increase a person’s vulnerability to depression later in life, and stressful life events, especially where some type of loss is involved, are, in general, potent precipitating causes. Both psychosocial and biochemical mechanisms can be causative factors in depression. The best-supported hypotheses, however, suggest that the basic cause is faulty regulation of the release of one or more neurotransmitters (e.g., serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine), with a deficiency of neurotransmitters resulting in depression and an excess causing mania. The treatment of major depressive episodes usually requires antidepressant medications. Electroconvulsive therapy may also be helpful, as may cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal psychotherapies.
The characteristic symptoms and patterns of depression differ with age. Depression may appear at any age, but its most common period of onset is in young adulthood. Bipolar disorders also tend to appear first in young adulthood.
Other mood disorders
Less-severe forms of mental disorder include dysthymia, or persistent depressive disorder, a chronically depressed mood accompanied by one or more other symptoms of depression, and cyclothymic disorder (also known as cyclothymia), marked by chronic, yet not severe, mood swings.
Dysthmia may occur on its own but more commonly appears along with other neurotic symptoms such as anxiety, phobia, and hypochondriasis. It includes some, but not all, of the symptoms of depression. Where there are clear external grounds for a person’s unhappiness, a dysthymic disorder is considered to be present when the depressed mood is disproportionately severe or prolonged, when there is a preoccupation with the precipitating situation, when the depression continues even after removal of the provocation, and when it impairs the individual’s ability to cope with the specific stress. Although dysthymia tends to be a milder form of depression, it is nevertheless persistent and distressing to the person experiencing it, especially when it interferes with the person’s ability to conduct normal social or work activities. In cases of cyclothymic disorder, the prevailing mood swings are established in adolescence and continue throughout adult life.
At any time, depressive symptoms may be present in one-sixth of the population. Loss of self-esteem, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, and loss of cherished possessions are commonly associated with minor depression. Psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for both dysthymic disorder and cyclothymic disorder, although antidepressant medications or mood-stabilizing agents are often beneficial. Symptoms must be present for at least two years in order for a diagnosis of dysthymic or cyclothymic disorder to be made.
Major depressive disorder and dysthymia are much more prevalent than the bipolar disorders and cyclothymic disorder. The former disorders, which feature depressive symptoms exclusively, are also diagnosed more frequently in women than in men, whereas the latter tend to be diagnosed to about the same extent in women and men. Lifetime prevalence of major depression appears to be well over 10 percent for women and 5 percent for men. The prevalence for dysthymia is about 6 percent among the general population in the United States, but it is at least twice as common in women as in men. Lifetime prevalence rates reported for the bipolar disorders and cyclothymic disorder are roughly 1 percent or less.
Anxiety has been defined as a feeling of fear, dread, or apprehension that arises without a clear or appropriate justification. It thus differs from true fear, which is experienced in response to an actual threat or danger. Anxiety may arise in response to apparently innocuous situations or may be out of proportion to the actual degree of the external stress. Anxiety also frequently arises as a result of subjective emotional conflicts of whose nature the affected person may be unaware. Generally, intense, persistent, or chronic anxiety that is not justified in response to real-life stresses and that interferes with the individual’s functioning is regarded as a manifestation of mental disorder. Although anxiety is a symptom of many mental disorders (including schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder), in the anxiety disorders proper it is the primary and frequently the only symptom.
The symptoms of anxiety disorders are emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and psychophysiological. Anxiety disorder can manifest itself in a distinctive set of physiological signs that arise from overactivity of the sympathetic nervous system or from tension in skeletal muscles. The sufferer experiences palpitations, dry mouth, dilatation of the pupils, shortness of breath, sweating, abdominal pain, tightness in the throat, trembling, and dizziness. Aside from the actual feelings of dread and apprehension, the emotional and cognitive symptoms include irritability, worry, poor concentration, and restlessness. Anxiety may also be manifested in avoidance behaviour.
Anxiety disorders are distinguished primarily in terms of how they are experienced and to what type of anxiety they respond. For example, panic disorder is characterized by the occurrence of panic attacks, which are brief periods of intense anxiety. Panic disorder may occur with agoraphobia, which is a fear of being in certain public locations from which it could be difficult to escape.
Specific phobias are unreasonable fears of specific stimuli; common examples are a fear of heights and a fear of dogs. Social phobia is an unreasonable fear of being in social situations or in situations in which one’s behaviour is likely to be evaluated, such as in public speaking.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is characterized by the presence of obsessions, compulsions, or both. Obsessions are persistent unwanted thoughts that produce distress. Compulsions are repetitive rule-bound behaviours that the individual feels must be performed in order to ward off distressing situations. Obsessions and compulsions are often linked; for example, obsessions about contamination may be accompanied by compulsive washing.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by a set of symptoms that are experienced persistently following one’s involvement, either as a participant or as a witness, in an intensely negative event, usually experienced as a threat to life or well-being. Some of these symptoms include reexperiencing of the event, avoidance of stimuli associated with the event, emotional numbing, and hyperarousal. Finally, generalized anxiety disorder involves a pervasive sense of worry accompanied by other symptoms of anxiety.
In general, anxiety, like depression, is one of the most common psychological problems people experience and for which they seek treatment. While panic disorder and some phobias, such as agoraphobia, are diagnosed much more commonly in women than in men, there is little gender difference for the other anxiety disorders. The anxiety disorders tend to appear relatively early in life (i.e., in childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood). As with the mood disorders, a variety of psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments can be used to help resolve anxiety disorders.
In somatoform disorders, psychological distress is manifested through physical symptomatology (combined symptoms of a disease) or other physical concerns, but distress can occur in the absence of a medical condition. Even when a medical condition is present, it may not fully account for the symptoms. In such cases there may be positive evidence that the symptoms are caused by psychological factors. The lifetime prevalence of the somatoform disorders is relatively low (1 to 5 percent of the population) or has yet to be established. These disorders tend to be lifelong conditions that initially appear in adolescence or young adulthood.
This type of somatoform disorder, formerly known as Briquet syndrome (after French physician Paul Briquet), is characterized by multiple, recurrent physical complaints involving a wide range of bodily functions. The complaints, which usually extend over the course of many years, cannot be explained fully by the person’s medical history or current condition and are therefore attributed to psychological problems. The individual demands medical attention, but no organic cause (i.e., a relevant medical condition) is found. The symptoms invariably occur in many different bodily systems—for instance, back pain, dizziness, indigestion, difficulty with vision, and partial paralysis—and may follow trends in health concerns among the public.
The condition is relatively common and occurs in about 1 percent of adult women. Males rarely exhibit this disorder. There are no clear etiological factors. Treatment involves not agreeing with the person’s inclination to attribute organic causes to the symptoms and ensuring that physicians and surgeons do not cooperate with the person in seeking excessive diagnostic procedures or surgical remedies for the complaints.
This disorder was previously labeled hysteria. Its symptoms are a loss of or an alteration in physical functioning, which may include paralysis. The physical symptoms occur in the absence of organic pathology and are thought to stem instead from an underlying emotional conflict. The characteristic motor symptoms of conversion disorder include the paralysis of the voluntary muscles of an arm or leg, tremor, tics, and other disorders of movement or gait. The neurological symptoms may be widely distributed and may not correlate with actual nerve distribution. Blindness, deafness, loss of sensation in arms or legs, the feeling of “pins and needles,” and an increased sensitivity to pain in a limb may also be present.
Symptoms usually appear suddenly and occur in a setting of extreme psychological stress. The course of the disorder is variable, with recovery often occurring in a few days but with symptoms persisting for years or decades in chronic cases that remain untreated.
The causation of conversion disorder has been linked with fixations (i.e., arrested stages in the individual’s early psychosexual development). Freud’s theory that threatening or emotionally charged thoughts are repressed out of consciousness and converted into physical symptoms is still widely accepted. The treatment of conversion disorder thus requires psychological rather than pharmacological methods, notably the exploration of the individual’s underlying emotional conflicts. Conversion disorder can also be considered as a form of “illness behaviour”; i.e., the person uses the symptoms to gain a psychological advantage in social relationships, either by gathering sympathy or by being relieved of burdensome or stressful obligations and withdrawing from emotionally disturbing or threatening situations. Thus, the symptoms of conversion disorder may be advantageous, in a psychological sense, to the person who experiences them.
Hypochondriasis is a preoccupation with physical signs or symptoms that the person unrealistically interprets as abnormal, leading to the fear or belief that he is seriously ill. There may be fears about the future development of physical or mental symptoms, a belief that actual but minor symptoms are of dire consequence, or an experience of normal bodily sensations as threatening symptoms. Even when a thorough physical examination finds no organic cause for the physical signs the individual is concerned about, the examination may nonetheless fail to convince the person that no serious disease is present. The symptoms of hypochondriasis may occur with mental illnesses other than anxiety, such as depression or schizophrenia.
The onset of this disorder may be associated with precipitating factors such as an actual organic disease with physical and psychological aftereffects—e.g., coronary thrombosis in a previously fit man. Hypochondriasis often begins during the fourth and fifth decades of life but is also common at other times, such as during pregnancy. Treatment aims to provide understanding and support and to reinforce healthy behaviour; antidepressant medications may be used to relieve depressive symptoms.
Psychogenic pain disorder
In psychogenic pain disorder the main feature is a persistent complaint of pain in the absence of organic disease and with evidence of a psychological cause. The pattern of pain may not conform to the known anatomic distribution of the nervous system. Psychogenic pain may occur as part of hypochondriasis or as a symptom of a depressive disorder. Appropriate treatment depends on the context of the symptom.
Dissociation is said to occur when one or more mental processes (such as memory or identity) are split off, or dissociated, from the rest of the psychological apparatus so that their function is lost, altered, or impaired. Both dissociative identity disorder and depersonalization disorder are more commonly diagnosed in women than in men.
The symptoms of dissociative disorders have often been regarded as the mental counterparts of the physical symptoms displayed in conversion disorders. Since the dissociation may be an unconscious mental attempt to protect the individual from threatening impulses or repressed emotions, the conversion into physical symptoms and the dissociation of mental processes can be seen as related defense mechanisms arising in response to emotional conflict. Dissociative disorders are marked by a sudden, temporary alteration in the person’s consciousness, sense of identity, or motor behaviour. There may be an apparent loss of memory of previous activities or important personal events, with amnesia for the episode itself after recovery. These are rare conditions, however, and it is important to rule out organic causes first.
In dissociative amnesia there is a sudden loss of memory which may appear total; the individual can remember nothing about his previous life or even his name. The amnesia may be localized to a short period of time associated with a traumatic event or it may be selective, affecting the person’s recall of some, but not all, of the events during a particular time. In psychogenic fugue the individual typically wanders away from home or from work and assumes a new identity, cannot remember his previous identity, and, upon recovering, cannot recall the events that occurred during the fugue state. In many cases the disturbance lasts only a few hours or days and involves only limited travel. Severe stress is known to trigger this disorder.
Dissociative identity disorder, previously called multiple personality disorder, is a rare and remarkable condition in which two or more distinct and independent personalities develop in a single individual. Each of these personalities inhabits the person’s conscious awareness to the exclusion of the others at particular times. This disorder frequently arises as a result of traumas suffered during childhood and is best treated by psychotherapy, which seeks to reunite the various personalities into a single, integrated personality.
In depersonalization, one feels or perceives one’s body or self as being unreal, strange, altered in quality, or distant. This state of self-estrangement may take the form of feeling as if one is machinelike, is living in a dream, or is not in control of one’s actions. Derealization, or feelings of unreality concerning objects outside oneself, often occurs at the same time. Depersonalization may occur alone in neurotic persons but is more often associated with phobic, anxiety, or depressive symptoms. It most commonly occurs in younger women and may persist for many years. Persons find the experience of depersonalization intensely difficult to describe and often fear that others will think them insane. Organic conditions, especially temporal lobe epilepsy, must be excluded before making a diagnosis of neurosis when depersonalization occurs. As with other neurotic syndromes, it is more common to see many different symptoms than depersonalization alone.
The causes of depersonalization are obscure, and there is no specific treatment for it. When the symptom arises in the context of another psychiatric condition, treatment is aimed at that illness.
Two of the major classifications of eating disorders involve not only abnormalities of eating behaviour but also distortions in body perception. Anorexia nervosa consists of a considerable loss in body weight, refusal to gain weight, and a fear of becoming overweight that is dramatically at odds with reality. People with anorexia often become shockingly thin in the eyes of everyone but themselves, and they manifest the physical symptoms of starvation. Bulimia nervosa is characterized by either impulsive or “binge” eating (eating a significantly large amount of food during a given period of time), alternating with maladaptive (and often ineffective) efforts to lose weight, such as by purging (e.g., self-induced vomiting or misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas) or fasting. People with bulimia are also preoccupied with body weight and shape, but they do not exhibit the extreme weight loss apparent in anorexia patients. As many as 40–60 percent of anorexia patients also engage in binge eating as well as purging; however, they remain significantly underweight.
At least half of all people diagnosed with an eating disorder do not meet the full criteria for either of the two main categories described above. The diagnosis of eating disorder, not otherwise specified, or EDNOS, is given to those with clinically significant eating disturbances that meet some, but not all, of the diagnostic criteria for either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Examples of such include binge eating disorder (episodes of binge eating with the absence of compensatory weight-loss behaviours) and purging disorder (episodes of self-induced vomiting or misuse of laxatives that follow a normal or below normal amount of food consumption). Patients with anorexia nervosa engage in excessive control over their eating behaviour, although subjectively they may report feeling little to no control over their bodies with regard to weight gain. Those with bulimia also report a loss of control when engaging in episodes of binge eating, occasionally attempting to compensate for this at later times. According to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 0.5–3.7 percent of females will be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa in their lifetime. Lifetime prevalence for bulimia nervosa is about 0.6 percent among U.S. adults. The typical age of onset for anorexia is between the ages of 12 and 25. Both disorders are diagnosed far more frequently in girls than in boys. Prevalence rates for EDNOS are greater than for both anorexia and bulimia combined.
Misperceptions of one’s appearance can also be manifested as body dysmorphic disorder, in which an individual magnifies the negative aspects of a perceived flaw to such a degree that the person shuns social settings or embarks compulsively upon a series of appearance-augmenting procedures, such as dermatological treatments and plastic surgery, in an attempt to remove the perceived defect.
Personality is the characteristic way in which an individual thinks, feels, and behaves; it accounts for the ingrained behaviour patterns of the individual and is the basis for predicting how the individual will act in particular circumstances. Personality embraces a person’s moods, attitudes, and opinions and is most clearly expressed in interactions with other people. A personality disorder is a pervasive, enduring, maladaptive, and inflexible pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that either significantly impairs an individual’s social or occupational functioning or causes the person distress.
Theories of personality disorder, including their descriptive features, etiology, and development, are as various as theories of personality itself. For example, in trait theory (an approach toward the study of personality formation), personality disorders are viewed as rigid exaggerations of particular traits. Psychoanalytic theorists (Freudian psychologists) explain the genesis of the disorders in terms of markedly negative childhood experiences, such as abuse, that significantly alter the course of normal personality development. Still others in fields such as social learning and sociobiology focus on the maladaptive coping and interactional strategies embodied in the disorders.
A number of different personality disorders are recognized, some of which are discussed below. It is important to note that the mere presence of the trait, even having it to an abnormal extent, is not enough to constitute disorder; rather, the abnormality must also cause disturbance to the individual or to society. It is also common for personality disorders to co-occur with other psychological symptoms, including those of depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. Because personality traits are by definition virtually permanent, these disorders are only partially, if at all, amenable to treatment. The most effective treatment combines various types of group, behavioral, and cognitive psychotherapy. The behavioral manifestations of personality disorders often tend to diminish in their intensity in middle and old age.
Paranoid personality disorder
Marked by a pervasive suspiciousness and unjustified mistrust of others, this disorder is apparent when the individual misinterprets words and actions as having a special significance for him or as being directed against him. Sometimes such people are guarded, secretive, hostile, quarrelsome, and litigious, and they are excessively sensitive to the implied criticism of others. The disorder may develop over a lifetime, sometimes beginning in childhood or adolescence. It is more common in males.
In this disorder there is a disinclination to interact with others; the individual appears passive, aloof, and withdrawn, and there is a notable lack of interest in and responsiveness to interpersonal relationships. Such a person leads a solitary existence and may appear cold or unemotional. Some theorists hypothesize an underlying fear of connecting with others in a close relationship. The disorder may appear in childhood or adolescence as a tendency toward solitariness. Although it is much discussed in the psychoanalytic literature, it is nonetheless rare.
Schizotypal personality disorder
This disorder is characterized by notable oddities or eccentricities of thought, speech, perception, or behaviour that may be marked by social withdrawal, delusions of reference (beliefs that things unrelated to the individual refer to or have a personal significance for him or her), paranoid ideation (the belief that others are intent on harming or insulting the individual), and magical thinking, as well as bizarre fantasies or persecutory delusions. Eccentricities alone do not justify the diagnosis of this (or any) disorder; instead, the characteristic features of schizotypal personality disorder are of such severity that they cause interpersonal deficiencies and considerable emotional distress. Some features may even resemble symptoms of schizophrenia, but, unlike schizophrenia, the personality disorder is stable and enduring, developing as early as childhood or adolescence and lasting throughout life, yet only rarely progressing into schizophrenia.
Those who are diagnosed with this disorder typically exhibit a personal history of chronic and continuous antisocial behaviour that involves violating the rights of others. Job performance is poor or nonexistent. The disorder is associated with actions such as persistent criminality, sexual promiscuity or aggressive sexual behaviour, and drug use. There is evidence of conduct disorder in childhood and antisocial behaviour in mid-adolescence. People with this disorder typically have problems with the law, and they are often deceitful, aggressive, impulsive, irresponsible, and remorseless. As with borderline personality disorder (discussed below), the features of antisocial personality disorder tend to fade in middle age, but there remains a high risk of suicide, accidental death, drug or alcohol abuse, and a tendency toward interpersonal problems. The disorder occurs more commonly in men.
Borderline personality disorder is characterized by an extraordinarily unstable mood and self-image. Individuals with this disorder may exhibit intense episodes of anger, depression, or anxiety. This is a disorder of personality instability—such as unstable emotionality, unstable interpersonal relationships, unstable sense of self—as well as impulsivity. People with this disorder often have “emotional roller-coaster” relationships, in which they experience a desperate fear of abandonment and exhibit alternating extremes of positive and negative affect toward the other person. They may engage in a variety of reckless behaviours, including sexual risk-taking, substance abuse, self-mutilation, and attempts at suicide. They may exhibit cognitive problems as well, particularly regarding their physical and psychological sense of self. The disorder, which occurs more commonly in women, often appears in early adulthood and tends to fade by middle age.
People with this disorder are overly dramatic and intensely expressive, egocentric, highly reactive, and excitable. The characteristic behaviour seems to have the purpose of calling attention to oneself. Other features of this disorder may include emotional and interpersonal superficiality as well as socially inappropriate interpersonal behaviour. Although clinical tradition has tended to associate it more frequently with women, the disorder occurs in both women and men, and it tends to take on characteristics of stereotypical sex roles.
A person with this disorder has a grandiose sense of self-importance and a preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, and achievement. The essential characteristic of this disorder is an exaggerated sense of self-importance that is reflected in a wide variety of situations. The sense of self-worth exceeds the individual’s actual accomplishments. People with this disorder are typically egocentric and are often insensitive to the perspectives and needs of others. They are likely to be seen as arrogant. The disorder is more common in men, and it tends to be apparent by early adulthood. Both narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders are described largely in terms of common personality characteristics, albeit in exaggerated form; what makes each a disorder, however, is not the exaggerated characteristics alone but the distress and dysfunction they produce.
Avoidant personality disorder
People with this disorder feel personally inadequate and fear that others judge them to be so in social situations. They show extreme sensitivity to rejection and may lead socially withdrawn lives, tending to avoid social situations for fear of being evaluated negatively by others. When they do participate in social situations, they often appear inhibited. They are not asocial, however; they show a great desire for companionship but need unusually strong guarantees of uncritical acceptance. Persons with this disorder are commonly described as having an “inferiority complex.” Although avoidant personality disorder often appears in childhood or adolescence (first as shyness), it tends to diminish somewhat in adulthood.
This disorder is identified in individuals who subordinate their own needs, as well as responsibility over major areas of their lives, to the control of others. In other words, people with this disorder feel personally inadequate, and they exhibit this in their reluctance to take responsibility for themselves, such as in everyday decision making and long-term planning. Instead, they turn to others for these things, creating relationships in which others essentially take care of them. Their own relationship behaviour is likely to be clinging, deferent, eager to please, and self-abasing, and they may exhibit an excessive fear of abandonment. This is one of the most common personality disorders. Persons with this disorder lack self-confidence and may experience intense discomfort when alone. (Compare codependency.)
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
A person with this disorder shows prominent overscrupulous, perfectionistic traits that are expressed in feelings of insecurity, self-doubt, meticulous conscientiousness, indecisiveness, excessive orderliness, and rigidity of behaviour. The person is preoccupied with rules and procedures as ends in themselves. Such persons tend to show a great concern for efficiency, are overly devoted to work and productivity, and are usually deficient in the ability to express warm or tender emotions. They may also exhibit a high degree of moral rigidity that is not explained by upbringing alone. This disorder is more common in men and is in many ways the antithesis of antisocial personality disorder.
The causes of personality disorders are obscure and, in many cases, difficult to study empirically. There is, however, a constitutional and therefore hereditary element in determining personality characteristics generally and so in determining personality disorders as well. Psychological and environmental factors are also important in causation. For example, many authorities believe there is a link between childhood sexual abuse and the development of borderline personality disorder or between harsh, inconsistent punishment in childhood and the development of antisocial personality disorder. However, it is extremely difficult to establish the validity of these links through systematic scientific inquiry, and, in any case, such environmental factors are not always associated with the disorders.
People with gender dysphoria, formerly known as gender identity disorder, experience significant stress and impairment as a result of a feeling a discrepancy between their anatomical sex and the gender that they ascribe to themselves. The feeling of discrepancy itself is not considered a disorder. An individual with gender dysphoria may assume the dress and behaviour and participate in activities commonly associated with the opposite sex and may eventually undergo permanent gender reassignment through hormone replacement therapy and surgery.
Paraphilias, or sexual deviations, are defined as unusual fantasies, urges, or behaviours that are recurrent and sexually arousing. These urges must occur for at least six months and cause distress to the individual in order to be classified as a paraphilia. In fetishism, inanimate objects (e.g., shoes) are the person’s sexual preference and means of sexual arousal. In transvestism, the recurrent wearing of clothes of the opposite sex is performed to achieve sexual excitement. In pedophilia, an adult has sexual fantasies about or engages in sexual acts with a prepubertal child of the same or opposite sex. In exhibitionism, repeated exposure of the genitals to an unsuspecting stranger is used to achieve sexual excitement. In voyeurism, observing the sexual activity of others repeatedly is the preferred means of sexual arousal. In sadomasochism, the individual achieves sexual excitement as either the recipient or the provider of pain, humiliation, or bondage.
The causes of these conditions are generally not known. Behavioral, psychodynamic, and pharmacological methods have been used with varying efficacy to treat these disorders.
Disorders usually first evident in infancy, childhood, or adolescence
Children are usually referred to a psychiatrist or therapist because of complaints or concern about their behaviour or development expressed by a parent or some other adult. Family problems, particularly difficulties in the parent-child relationship, are often an important causative factor in the symptomatic behaviour of the child. For a child psychiatrist, the observation of behaviour is especially important, as children may not be able to express their feelings in words. Isolated psychological symptoms are extremely common in children. Boys are affected twice as often as girls.
Children with attention-deficit disorders show a degree of inattention and impulsiveness that is markedly inappropriate for their stage of development. Gross overactivity in children can have many causes, including anxiety, conduct disorder (discussed below), or the stresses associated with living in institutions. Learning difficulties and antisocial behaviour may occur secondarily. This syndrome is more common in boys than in girls.
These are the most common psychiatric disorders in older children and adolescents, accounting for nearly two-thirds of disorders in those of age 10 or 11. Abnormal conduct more serious than ordinary childlike mischief persistently occurs; lying, disobedience, aggression, truancy, delinquency, and deterioration of work may occur at home or at school. Vandalism, drug and alcohol abuse, and early sexual promiscuity may also occur. The most important causative factors are the family background; broken homes, unstable and rejecting families, institutional care in childhood, and a poor social environment are frequently present in such cases.
Neurotic or emotional disorders in children are similar to the adult conditions except that they are often less clearly differentiated. In anxiety disorders of childhood, the child is fearful, timid with other children, and overdependent and clinging toward the parents. Physical symptoms, sleep disturbance, and nightmares occur. Separation from the parent or from the home environment is a major cause of this anxiety.
Anorexia nervosa usually starts in late adolescence and is about 20 times more common in girls than in boys. This disorder is characterized by a failure to maintain normal body weight for an individual’s age and height; weight loss is at least 15 percent of the ideal body weight. Weight loss occurs because of an intense desire to be thin, a fear of gaining weight, or a disturbance in the way in which the individual sees her body weight or shape. Postmenarchal females with anorexia nervosa usually experience amenorrhea (i.e., the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual periods). Medical complications of anorexia nervosa can be life-threatening.
The condition appears to start with an individual’s voluntary control of food intake in response to social pressures such as peer conformity. The disorder is exacerbated by troubled relations within the family. It is much more common in developed, wealthy societies and in girls of higher socioeconomic class. Treatment includes persuading the person to accept and cooperate with medical therapy, achieving weight gain, and helping the person maintain weight by psychological and social therapy.Sari Shepphird
Other childhood disorders
Stereotyped movement disorders involve the exhibition of tics in differing patterns. A tic is an involuntary, purposeless jerking movement of a group of muscles or the involuntary production of noises or words. Tics may affect the face, head, and neck or, less commonly, the limbs or trunk. Tourette syndrome is typified by multiple tics and involuntary vocalization, which sometimes includes the uttering of obscenities.
Other physical symptoms that are often listed among psychiatric disorders of childhood include stuttering, enuresis (the repeated involuntary emptying of urine from the bladder during the day or night), encopresis (the repeated voiding of feces into inappropriate places), sleepwalking, and night terror. These symptoms are not necessarily evidence of emotional disturbance or of some other mental illness. Behavioral methods of treatment are usually effective.
Other mental disorders
Factitious disorders are characterized by physical or psychological symptoms that are voluntarily self-induced; they are distinguished from conversion disorder, in which the physical symptoms are produced unconsciously. In factitious disorders, although the person’s attempts to create or exacerbate the symptoms of an illness are voluntary, such behaviour is neurotic in that the individual is unable to refrain from it—i.e., the person’s goals, whatever they may be, are involuntarily adopted. In malingering, by contrast, the person stimulates or exaggerates an illness or disability to obtain some kind of discernible personal gain or to avoid an unpleasant situation; e.g., a prison inmate may simulate madness to obtain more-comfortable living conditions. It is important to recognize factitious disorders as evidence of psychological disturbance.
Persons with these conditions demonstrate a failure to resist desires, impulses, or temptations to perform an act that is harmful to themselves or to others. The individual experiences a feeling of tension before committing the act and a feeling of release or gratification upon completing it. The behaviours involved include pathological gambling, pathological setting of fires (pyromania), pathological stealing (kleptomania), and recurrent pulling of hair (trichotillomania).
These are conditions in which there is an inappropriate reaction to an external stress occurring within three months of the stress. The symptoms may be out of proportion to the degree of stress, or they may be maladaptive in the sense that they prevent an individual from coping adequately in normal social or occupational settings. These disorders are often associated with other mood or anxiety disorders.