The Different Psychological Disorders

We usually talk about different psychological disorders according to the symptoms that characterize them, and not according to their origin, while this point is just as important, see more.

Thus, a mental disorder does not appear magically, and its symptoms are not random. On the contrary, each disorder is a puzzle whose elements are logical and understandable.

So we can ask ourselves: what happens for a psychological disorder to appear?  Are there any predispositions? Is there a  cause and effect relationship? The answers can be found in this article.

Psychological disorders

Psychological disorder, also known as “mental illness”, involves an alteration in a person’s behavior and reasoning.

This disorder can sometimes prevent the patient from living a normal life and cause the need for constant treatment to allow him to live in “normalcy”.

Thus, we speak of a disorder when the problem comes to limit the life of the person who suffers from it.

There are different types of disorders.  The most frequent are:

• Schizophrenia  : When a person hears voices that no one else hears, which often prompts them to do certain things.

• Autism  : More common in boys than in girls, this disorder is characterized by a developmental deficit, which prevents the individual from communicating, imagining or planning.

• Bipolar disorder  : This disorder causes emotions that are exaggerated and taken to the extreme. For example, the individual may be very happy and then suddenly in a state of maximum depression.

• Personality disorder  : set of disturbances that affect the emotional, affective and social dimension of an individual. The best known are antisocial personality disorders and borderline personality disorder .

• Eating disorder  : when the mind distorts what an individual sees, in this case: the body.

• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)  : Common in children, this disorder is characterized by difficulty concentrating and controlling behavior.

• Panic  : disorder which limits an individual. This is the physical consequence of the feeling of fear (palpitations, difficulty in breathing).

• Anxiety disorder  : this type of disorder encompasses 3 categories: obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

The onset of a psychological disorder

Now that we have seen the most common disorders, we can then ask ourselves: what goes on in our mind when a disorder appears?

Why do some people suffer from this kind of disorder while others do not?

Trauma

The first reason for the appearance of a psychological disorder is trauma. A traumatic fact experienced in childhood (mistreatment, violence, abuse) can leave consequences that will last over time and affect adult life, because the person has buried a heavy secret and has not spoken about it.

There is no fixed age for the onset of trauma. On the other hand, we know that it can drift and cause eating disorders, panic disorders, anxiety, etc. As Sigmund Freud already said:

We owe a lot to psychoanalysis. Indeed, it allowed a revolution in the way of understanding disorders, and it made psychology reflect on the importance that play in us the patterns which we learned and internalized very young.

Thus, today, recent perspectives such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) are based on the existence of these patterns to perform interventions.

Genetic

Some disorders have a genetic origin. This does not mean that if someone in your family has suffered from schizophrenia or depression you will have it too, but that you are indeed at higher risk.

This history of genetic history is more particularly observed in individuals with autism, attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity, bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia.

As we mentioned, this does not necessarily imply that you will develop a mental disorder if someone in your family has had it. There are many factors that come into play, and none are equal across individuals.

Environmental factors

Finally, a psychological disorder can be due to certain environmental factors. For example, the death of a loved one can lead to a psychotic attack, through all the stress this situation generates. The same can be true of divorce or drug abuse.

In young people, social or cultural expectations can cause disorders, including eating disorders.

Permanent advertisements that dictate physical perfection worsen this phenomenon, the incidence of which is increasing, and the number of people affected more and more.

As we have seen, there are many factors explaining the appearance of a psychological disorder.

There are others such as infections, brain damage or birth injuries, which can also promote the appearance of these kinds of disorders.