By: Prof. Dr. M Aleem Siddiqui M.D.,D.P.M., Sr. Associate Editor-ICN
LUCKNOW: A mental disorder is a disease that causes mild to severe disturbances in thought and/or behavior, resulting in an inability to cope with life’s ordinary demands and routines.
Mental health problems may or may not be related to excessive stress due to a particular situation or series of events. As with cancer, diabetes and heart disease, mental disorder are often physical as well as emotional and psychological.
Mental disorder may be caused by a reaction to environmental stresses, genetic factors, biochemical imbalances, or a combination of these. With proper care and treatment many individuals learn to cope or recover from a mental illness or emotional disorder.
Since mental health disorders are quite common(15 to 20% of all people around you), everyone should know how to screen them, especially since early identification makes management easy and your prognosis better.
As you should get yourself checked if Blood pressure is above or around 140/90 mm of hg, similarly,
1. Any major change of behavior and emotions from before
2. That becomes so severe/frequent/persistent
3. That it leads to failure of performing social-occupational- family-self-care roles (That is the threshold here)
4.Should be screened by a psychiatrist.
What are these changes in behavior?
We can use an unofficial classification for this purpose.
1. Common mental disorders (CMD): which include symptoms that we all experience from time to time, for example, feelings of fear, worry or sadness. E.g. Depression, Anxiety, OCD, Substance abuse, Headaches, Sleep problems, Sexual problems, Memory Problems, Unexplained bodily symptoms etc.
2. Severe mental disorders (SMD): which are often difficult for to understand, for example, hearing voices that no one else can or expressing strange or unusual beliefs with out any comprehensible logic, extreme agitation or retardation without any apparent cause. E.g. Schizophrenia and other Psychoses, Bipolar disorder etc.
3. Developmental disorders of Childhood (DDC) e.g. ADHD, Autism spectrum, Mental Retardation etc.
The qualifying criteria to be Mental illness for all the above symptoms is social occupational dysfunction (=SOD), so any significant change in behavior from previous, ie which leads to socio-occupational dysfunction should be screened for mental illness by a referral to a psychiatrist.
So the equation comes out to be (CMD+SOD) or (SMD+SOD) or (DDC+SOD) or (CMD+SMD+SOD) or (DDC+CMD+SMD+SOD) = needs screening!
