THE ILLNESS:

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• In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) defined mental disorders in the DSM-5 as "a syndrome characterised by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. (*DSM-5: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition)

• Mental Illness, (also Mental Disorders/Psychological Disorders) is a mental or behavioural pattern which can cause physical or mental suffering or deprived ability to function.

• These can affect someone's thinking, feelings, mood, behaviour, actions, or relations to other people or surroundings.

• A mental illness can cause mild or severe distress and affects person’s ability to perform each day work, and behave normally in relationships. In severe cases, it makes life really hard to handle and may lead to suicide.

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THE CAUSE:

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• The specific cause of a definite mental pattern cannot be predicted as such. A mental illness generally isn’t the result of a single event, rather in many cases multiple causes leads to a mental disorder. 

• Environment, Genetical development, early life development, personal lifestyle, circumstances decides the mental stability (health) of a person. 

• A stressful life, sudden trauma, over addiction etc may cause mental disorders to arise.

• Drugs or alcohol abuse can also cause mental disorders. 

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THE OCCURRENCE:

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• According to World Health Organisation One in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives.

• Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide. (*WHO Geneva 2001 report)

• Mental Disorders are very common among population, but the problem arises in severe disorders that can lead to criminal tendencies or suicide.

• Common mental disorders include depression, which affects about 400 million, dementia which affects about 35 million, and schizophrenia, which affects about 21 million people globally. (*WHO Mental Disorders Fact Sheet 2014).

• In India itself, according to WHO 7.5% of total population suffers from mental disorders. 

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THE DISORDERS AND SYMPTOMS:

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• Symptoms of these disorders vary person to person, from mild to severe. The irony is each person, diagnosed with same disorder may have different experiences.

• There are many problems (symptoms) associated with mental disorders, that shows different patterns (signs). These patterns may occur over a prolonged period, or relapse in certain time, or may occur as a single episode.

• The common symptoms associated with mental disorders are abnormal behaviour (changes in behaviour), mood swings, Hallucinations, sleep problems, uncontrolled feelings and emotions, worse thoughts (suicidal, criminal or self harming), poor ability to maintain relationships with others etc.

• DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has listed more than about 300 mental disorders.  

• General groups of types of mental disorders are: (Usually these are interlinked in many cases)

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