The rate of people suffering from mental disorders has been gradually increasing in recent years. It is found that around 300 million people have mental illness worldwide. This is actually 4.4% of the world population.
Many people think that mental disorders are rare and happen to people who are injured in the brain region. They are not aware that the problem is widespread and mostly possible with depression we are encountering in our daily lives. Apart from depression, more than 200 forms of mental disorders have been classified like anxiety disorders, dementia, bipolar disorder, etc.
Whatever the mental ailment is, it disturbs the way a person thinks and reacts. Such disturbances in the thought or behavior make the suffered person hard to cope with his/her surroundings and incapable to handle the daily routines.
What causes mental disorders?
To say frankly, the root causes of mental illness are not clearly identified. Psychiatrists believe that the dilemma happens because of biological, psychological, environmental factors or a combination of these. Besides those factors, alcohol abuse and biochemical imbalances also play a crucial role in tweaking the mental health of a person.
-
Biochemical imbalances
Some mental health problems arise due to atypical functioning of the nerve cells associated with the brain. Those nerve cells communicate brain with the help of chemicals called Neurotransmitters. Certain medications and drugs are powerful to twist such neurotransmitters. Likewise, few therapies are also capable of altering the response or create imbalances in those chemicals.
Such interferences in the nerve cell circuits linked to the brain will lead to mental health problems.
-
Biological factors
Various aspects involved in the biological factors to evolve mental illness include:
- Genes Genes have the instructions for the functioning of the cells in our body. It actually replicates or inherits the genes of our parents. A person is susceptible to mental illness if his/her parent or close relation in their family had mental disorders. Luckily, such mental problems are possible if they are inherited in multiple genes from parents and cannot happen with a single gene. It means people are highly vulnerable to mental illness caused by hereditary and chances of developing the problem are relatively less with genetics.
-
Prenatal Damage
Researchers show that things happen when the fetus is developing in the uterus are also responsible to cause mental health issues in the future. As events like toxin exposure, maternal stress and some infections will disrupt brain development during fetus. It will end in adverse mental disorders like autism, anxiety, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and mood disorders.
-
Infections
Infections like septicemia trigger harmful bacteria like Streptococcus to contaminate the blood. As blood is associated with the functioning of all organs inside the body, it will infect those organs. Brain injury is also possible with those infections and leads to mental disorders like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
- Nutritional Factors Frequent intake of highly sugary foods, junk food items does not provide nutrients that require for the functioning of our brain. Then the chances are higher for brain injury, neuronal dysfunctions and mental health dilemma like dementia are possible.
-
Psychological Factors
Psychologists reveal that the abnormal behaviors of a person can also be caused by emotional stress. Loathsome or troublesome psychological stressors especially happened in one’s childhood trigger such emotional stress which then causes mental disorders. Few instances of such psychological stressors include:
- Early loss of parents or beloved ones
- Physical, emotional or sexual abusive
- Ignored by the surrounding and closed ones
- Social withdrawal
People who undergo such emotional stress cannot relate to others. Then they do not express or share their feelings with any others. This will push them to create logics for the illogical actions they do.
-
Environmental Factors
Besides the hardships encountered by a person or hereditary concerns, the abnormal situations and events happening in our daily lives can also influence the mind of a person. Some examples are as follows:
- Death
- Divorce
- Stress in the Work Place
- Changing the Schools
- Being teased or cornered for physical appearance or personality.
Persons who are influenced with such emotional stressors will feel loneliness, lower self-esteem and persuade their complexions. Such people are highly susceptible to anxiety or depression.
Symptoms of Mental disorders
The problem of mental illness is common in people of all ages, people of all classes and people from all cultural background. It is hard to observe such problems during its progression. The change of attitude, actions and way of thinking help to identify the problem.
The symptoms or signals vary for people of different age groups as follows:
Kids in Pre-adolescent age
- Changes in sleeping and eating patterns
- Anger outbreaks frequently
- Unable to cope with daily tasks
- Prolonged negative thoughts
- Extreme fear
Younger children
- Hyperactivity
- Changes in eating and sleeping habits
- Frequent temper outbursts
- Difference in doing daily actions
- Horror Dreams
Adults and Adolescents
- Extreme Anger
- Strange thoughts
- Suicidal thoughts
- Worrying and Scaring for no reason
- Persistent Depression
- Social isolation
- Feeling difficulty in doing daily routine works
People who are encountering these warning signals need to get counseling or treatment from a Psychiatrist. Get rid of such mental health ailments is not a complex thing. If you take such mentally affected person at initial or the developing stage, the counseling given by the doctor along with the will and self-discipline of the person bring back the original state of his/her mental health.