Mental Disorders: Symptoms and Characteristics
Phobic Disorders
Phobic disorders are characterized by a persistent and irrational fear of objects, activities, or situations. This fear causes the individual to avoid these stimuli, despite recognizing that the fear is excessive or unreasonable.
- Agoraphobia: The most serious phobia, where individuals are unable to leave home or stay in unfamiliar places.
- Social Phobia: An irrational fear of situations where one can be observed by others.
- Simple Phobia: An irrational fear of a specific object or situation, such as dogs, heights, mice, snakes, or death.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Obsessions: Thoughts, images, or impulses that repeatedly and persistently come to mind, despite the individual’s recognition of their absurdity.
Compulsions: Repetitive and irrational behaviors that the subject feels forced to perform. If the compulsion is not carried out, it creates a state of anxiety.
Hysterical or Somatoform Disorders
The presence of physical symptoms for which no organic basis can be found. The patient exhibits a series of physical demonstrations that are not feigned.
Depression
- Sad and hopeless mood
- Sleep disorders: increased or decreased sleep
- Appetite disorders: increased or decreased appetite
- Concentration problems
- Loss of energy and interest in activities previously enjoyed (anhedonia)
- Loss of sexual interest
- Selective report: Focus on negative events
Mania
- Expansive euphoria
- Irritability and hostility
- Acceleration of thought processes and verbiage
- High self-esteem, delusions
- Hyperactivity: increased sexual activity
- Neglect of hygiene and personal appearance
- Hypermnesia for positive topics
- Insomnia; the individual does not feel sick
- Excessive expenditure of money
Personality Disorders
- Paranoid Personality Disorder: Suspicion, distrust, hypersensitivity.
- Antisocial Personality Disorder: Chronic behavior that violates the rights of others, beginning before age 15.
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Fantasies of unlimited success, requires the attention of others, responds with anger to criticism or failure.
- Histrionic Personality Disorder: Overly dramatic behavior, temper tantrums, vanity, unreasonable demands, need for security and handling.
- Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder: Indirect resistance to demands to perform a task, using maneuvers such as loitering, inefficiency, or neglect.
- Dependent Personality Disorder: Lack of self-confidence that leads to letting others take responsibility for one’s life and make important decisions.
- Compulsive Personality Disorder: Perfectionism, insistence that others do things their way, adherence to work.
Schizophrenia
- Disturbances in thought content: Individuals may believe they are being pursued or that others can hear their thoughts.
- Loss of associative ability: Moving from one unrelated topic to another.
- Vague speech: When words are invented (neologisms).
- Hallucinations: Hearing voices, seeing apparitions, or having unusual tactile feelings.
- Withdrawal from the real world into a personal world.
Paranoia
- Delusion of Persecution: The most frequent type. Individuals are certain they are suffering persecution.
- Jealous Delusion: Pathological jealousy.
- Erotomanic Delusion: The patient’s belief of being loved by someone, often of a higher social rank. It is more common in women.
Autism
Starts within 30 months of age. These children create a closed and impenetrable world, with a total loss of contact with reality. The main manifestations are:
- Limited social interaction.
- Problems with verbal and nonverbal communication.
- Problems with imagination: lack of interest in games, creative activities, and limited, intense, or unusual interests.
Anorexia Nervosa
- Intense fear of gaining weight.
- Body image disturbance; individuals often look in the mirror and perceive themselves as obese.
- Loss of at least 15% of original body weight.
- Absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles.
- Absence of somatic diseases justifying the weight loss.
- May have episodes of bulimia, often followed by vomiting.
- Feelings of guilt for having eaten.
- Hyperactivity and excessive physical exercise.
- Changes in character; individuals often deny the illness and resist treatment.
- Weight loss often requires hospitalization, and death can occur.
Bulimia Nervosa
- Recurrent episodes of voracious intake: rapid consumption of large quantities of food in a short period.
- Feeling of lack of control over eating during binge-eating episodes, followed by feelings of guilt.
- The person strives to induce vomiting, use laxatives or diuretics, practice strict dieting or fasting, or exercise excessively to prevent weight gain.
- A minimum average of two binge-eating episodes per week for at least three months.
- Persistent preoccupation with body shape and weight.
- Weight may be normal or even high.