Unit 12 : Understand Mental Health Problems

1 know the main forms of mental ill health

1.1 All systems of mental disorders and diagnosis stem from the work of Kraepelin. He regarded each mental illness as being distinct from all others with its own origins, symptoms, courses and outcomes.

Kraepelin identified two major groups: Dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and manic depressive psychosis (faulty metabolism) this helped to establish the organic nature of the mental disorders and formed the basis of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification Of Diseases (ICD)

There are many types of mental health illnesses that come under the DSM classification system these include:
Mood disorders: also known as affective disorders, involve persistent feelings of sadness or periods of being over happy. Or extreme fluctuations of being over happy or extreme sadness. The main types of mood disorder are depression, mania and bipolar disorder.
Personality disorders: involve having extreme and inflexible personality traits that can be distressing to the person. It can affect an individual’s acceptance into society as their behaviour and patterns of thinking are very different. Examples include antisocial personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder.
Anxiety disorders: Respond to certain objects or situations with fear or dread. The person may show physical signs of anxiety such as sweating and increase of heartbeat, but also will show a change in response to certain situations. Examples include generalized anxiety; post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and social anxiety disorder.
Psychotic disorders: Involve distorted awareness and thinking, the most common signs are hallucinations and hearing voices, these are false beliefs that the ill person beliefs to be true. Schizophrenia is an example of a psychotic disorder.
Impulse control and addiction disorders: sufferers are unable to control certain urges or impulses to perform acts that are harmful to themselves or others. Conditions such as kleptomania (stealing) and pyromania (starting fires) are examples of this. Alcohol and drug addiction are also types of addiction disorders. People who suffer from these conditions often begin to ignore responsibilities and relationships begin to suffer.
Eating disorders: involve extreme emotions and behaviours related to food and weight. Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and eating disorders are the most common types of eating disorders.
Somatoform disorders: a person will show the physical signs of an illness even although a doctor can find no medical cause for the symptoms.
Cognitive disorders: primarily affect learning, memory, perception. And problem solving, these include amnesia, dementia and delirium.

1.2 Strengths of the DSM are that it provides a well designed standard and comprehensive diagnostic tool for clinicians and researchers. It categorises diagnostic information in a systematic manner by grouping individuals; this allows psychiatrists to diagnose extremely disturbed individuals based on similarities of behaviour. The DSM is easy for clinicians and researchers to use and recently more in depth versions allows the appropriate disorder to be diagnosed. However some disagree that the DSM is an objective method of diagnosis, as many clinicians rarely agree on the same diagnosis, categorise of symptoms overlap, and patients tend not to fit the criteria. Ethically the classification system has been criticised because of its ability to attach stigma to the diagnosed patient. Some also believe that due to the system being empirically based and materialistic, other sources such as intuition and emotion have been ignored therefore it is hard to treat the mentally ill effectively. It is also limited as diagnoses have been known to change overtime

1.3 Biological and medical frameworks (sometimes referred to as the disease model)