Mental Disorders

Understanding Mental Disorders

       Talking about mental disorders, it usually doesn’t match with our thinking. Mental disorders in an individual are in-fact a partial gathering of physiological and behavioral pattern associated with subjective distress and disability. In other words, a mental illness affects one's thoughts, emotions, and personality. For any mental illness, as in a physical illness, there are symptoms that make it possible to identify a person suffering from a mental disorder or illness. Some of the more common symptoms of these disorders include extreme moods, sadness, anxiety and inability to think clearly or remember well. Just because a person may experience some of these symptoms does not mean he/she is suffering from an illness. In a real world, almost everyone at sometime may not be able to think properly or may be in a bad mood. These characteristics are just a part of human nature and are more likely to be a short-term state of mind. A diagnostic of the mental illness/disorder may be necessary if the symptoms occur so often that they interfere with one's everyday life. In this research paper, we are going to learn about mental disorders and its cause that occur among teenagers. Also, about treatments towards veterans who are mentally and physically exhausted.

         Amazingly, 40% Americans are suffering from mental illness every year (Mental Disorders 1). This fact makes people take a look towards the seriousness of the problem. What is the result? Autism (a developmental disorder that appears in children, and affects the brain's normal development of social and communication skills) and many other illnesses. From the 1980's mental disorder (Autism) has turned out to be a public crisis (Dachel). It's negative effect towards the environment, nature, society, and community is increasing rapidly. The article called “Autism Is a Serious Health Crisis” by Anne McElroy Dachel states that, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has produced studies to back up her theory about autism (really a big lie). What is this big lie about? What is it trying to explain? As we already know, people in the early ages were not so familiar with the fact that mental disorders exist, they came up with this controversy. Consequently, this controversy is described in our other article 'Autism is not an Epidemic”. On the other hand, this article explains the reason why people think that autism is a public crisis. “The likely reasons for the increase in autism prevalence are the broadening of the diagnostic rules for the disorder, better sampling of cases in the community, and better diagnostic precision.” said Lawrence Scahill (1). Medical communities, health officials, educators and vast parade of reporters claim that the epidemic in kids with autism and related disorders overwhelming our schools, is the result of “greater awareness” and “better diagnosing” (Dachel 1). Scheming through these viewpoints, the really big lie came up with identification of the illness. CDC on the other hand is getting away with the really big lie, the explanation to eradicate the effect of any disease towards the children. A town with only 14,000 people figured out that the rate of autism was 1 in 10,000 (Dachel 2). This result verified that the possibility of a child with autistic behavior were rare.

         However, there are some conditions that state that chances for increasing number of people (especially teens) might be suffering from mental illness. They are divided into mainly ten categories. These categories include dementia, schizophrenia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, eating, and finally substance disorders (Mental Disorders 1-2).

         Relating to the point, there are various factors that cause such illness. One of them is use of highly toxic substance; we call “Marijuana”. Drug taking habit is highly suspected to lead one's way towards disorders and other kinds of diseases. The prevalence rate of using Marijuana is approximately 8% for adolescents (referred as teens) and including high school teens showing up to 29%. A teen that is going through depression is more likely to have used Marijuana (25%), compared to a teen that isn't going through depression intake 12% Marijuana and other illicit drugs. Among older adolescents, involvement with illicit drugs including Marijuana was reported by approximately 25% (depressed) teens and 19% of adults (not depressed) (Marijuana Use Worsens Teen Depression 3). Males and females do not differ significantly in illicit drug use. Here comes the mystery part; why do teens including older people do Marijuana and illicit drugs? The key to this question relates to the mental disorders and its symptoms. After a person has experienced the mental illness, he/she will obviously develop effects like depression and loneliness. In-order to get away from such feelings and symptoms,teens including adults start abusing drugs (illicit or by others means). Teens who do drugs claim that the drugs are a reliable, pleasing, and a source of self-medication (Marijuana Use Worsens Teen Depression 1).

         Despite the fact that the teens do drugs for pleasure and cure, there are many other ways to treat a depressed and mentally exhausted patient. Drugs, in-fact are the foundation of medicine (medication). Not only teens, military veterans who fight in he war, also suffer from depression and mental illness. In this new article “Psychotherapy May Not benefit Military Veterans”,it stated that psychotherapy is not a good choice to treat veterans. What this article states is that even if therapists clearly help some soldiers, there is only so much emotional damage from war they can fix (Caplan 1). This statement truly is a real life situation. Veterans who fight in the war for such a long time sure have a lot of emotions and memories. These emotions and memories are some vital factors for veterans to break themselves up. Furthermore, a soldier’s emotional response to the horrors of war is usually a normal human reaction to disturbing realties, not a sign of mental illness (Caplan 1). Such stories cause depression, which results in suicide. As far as war goes, there are different sorts of people in different sorts of places; including all religion, culture, country, and ethnicity. The suicide rate for American soldiers in Iraq is 17.3 per 100,000 (Caplan 2). Clearly, indicating the facts that people who suffer from depression are likely to encounter a devastating ending.

        Conclusively, it is obvious that mental illness is a serious problem in our community. It is important for a person experiencing symptoms, such as those associated with the different types of mental illnesses, to seek out appropriate diagnosis and medical treatment. Having a mental illness is a disease and shouldn’t be associated with a specific weakness in an individual. An individuals emotions and conditions related to the fact that they may or may-not suffer from depression, and other suicidal acts. Comparing teens problems to an adult may vary significantly. One should never underestimate his/her problems (talking about diseases) in a carefree manner. In-fact, he/she should carefully examine the problem and develop a distinguishing ability to choose the right decision. Likewise, organizing awareness programs towards " SAY NO TO DRUGS", "ONE TIME NO EVERY TIME NO” and “SOLVING THE PROBLEMS” may be a good idea to help and understand ones problems (sickness, illness, diseases etc.)

Work Cited

Caplan, Paula J. "Psychotherapy May Not Benefit Military Veterans." Gale Opposing Viewpoints. Gale, 2007. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.

Dachel, Anne McElroy. "Autism Is a Serious Public Health Crisis." Gale Opposing Viewpoints. Gale, 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.

"Marijuana Use Worsens Teen Depression." Gale Opposing Viewpoints. Gale, 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.

Scahill, Lawrence. "Autism Is Not an Epidemic." Gale Opposing Viewpoints. Gale, 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.