mental health disorders

[COMMUNIST FLISK]

Disorder tends to mean something present from birth, while illness might be due to something external (e.g. a disease); however, I think we're referring to any and all mental problems.

correct

i guess i am wrong for calling them all disorders then

 

[Mapp]

Question:

mental disorders = illness?
or from what level can we talk about (mental) illness?

Yeah I think it's pretty clear that mental disorders are illnesses. Like diseases they often present direct danger to the life and well-being of the subject. This is from someone who watched his wife's sister commit suicide after years of psychotic breakdowns.

 

[felixthecoach]

Mapp, wow, were they due to a "psychotic" disorder? Was she bipolar or schizotypal or something else? I'm sorry to hear that.

 

[Jotto999]

Tourettes Syndrome runs in my family. As a little kid I had ticks. One of my ticks was anytime something would touch my left hand, I would have an overwhelming desire for something to touch my right hand, to make it "equal". Failure to balance it out would feel extremely awkward and "not right". That's just one of them, I had lots. My mind was constantly being harassed and inconvenienced with things like this.

I sought no counselling for it, my parents knew what it was. I managed it on my own, had to spent time trying to teach my mind so it wouldn't happen.

It wasn't a big deal, just an inconvenience all the time. I can say that at 18, I am free of it, I've outgrown it completely.

Other than that I was depressed for a few years, but I've got over that too, again without any help or counselling, or medication.

Willpower > all, but of course some people have it much worse than I did. As far as mental problems go, Tourettes isn't really a big deal, just a huge pain in the ass.

 

[GoodKat]

I would have an overwhelming desire for something to touch my right hand, to make it "equal". Failure to balance it out would feel extremely awkward and "not right".

I thought that was called OCD, I used to do things like that, like click my teeth in between light posts while going down the road, or not stepping on cracks in pavement.

 

[Mapp]

Mapp, wow, were they due to a "psychotic" disorder? Was she bipolar or schizotypal or something else? I'm sorry to hear that.

She was both actually. Bi-polar affected with periodic psychotic breakdowns due to schizophrenia.

 

[felixthecoach]

Bi-polar affected with periodic psychotic breakdowns due to schizophrenia

That's got to be hard. Sorry to hear that.
______________________________

Just want to let you know:

Schizophrenia patients cannot also be bipolar. There's a diagnosis for that called schizoaffective. It's the worst of both worlds for someone with either disorder. Imagine having wild hallucinations one moment and incredibly depressed at the same time. Or maybe you're very upbeat, goal driven, and happy about life one moment, but cant get anything done because of the distractions from those hallucinations. It's very sad.

 

[Trinitron]

I thought that was called OCD, I used to do things like that, like click my teeth in between light posts while going down the road, or not stepping on cracks in pavement.

I'm like that as well, but I had no idea that it was OCD.

 

[King of NH]

For many years, I thought I had a severe social disorder. I hated people. Not the kind of hate that gave me any impulses to violence, but the kind of hate that made me sit at home and read books. I even hated the TV talking heads. I had a few close friends that I could deal with for a few days, take a week off, and a few more days of hanging out.

Then I decided (or rather, my mother decided) that I should go to college. After 9 years in social depression, I became a class clown. I loved spending time with people helping with homework, explaining ideas, and sharing in discussions. I befriended classmates, professors, even the college president to a small degree. I met my wife in, of all places, the library. I aced my classes and felt good about myself.

Now the economy has forced me to break from school and rebuild tuition funds. I still engage in discussions with my wife, but very few of my friends or coworkers enjoy discussing academics. I'm slipping back to my old ways, but I at least now know where a brighter future lies. I hope to be a teacher soon, continuing my education to a PhD and beyond in science (and art and literature once I'm old enough to audit them for free) and finding people when they are in the same frame of mind as I am. Until then, well, there's this site here. Hell, I even enjoy the odd creationist that provides some entertainment.

BTW: I still hate people, but less so. I have to avoid stores at peak hours, but I can watch TV without turning it off in disgust after 15 minutes.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I suffer from moderate to severe depression, that is mostly treated by medication. For reasons completely unknown to me and my new doctor, my old doctor changed my prescription without my knowledge or permission. So over the past couple of months, the depression has come back with a vengeance. I'm currently switching back to my old medications, but the process is slow and I'm having rather drastic mood swings as I go through adjustment with one and withdrawal from the other.

So, if you think I'm an asshole... now you know why. :|

 

[Jotto999]

I thought that was called OCD, I used to do things like that, like click my teeth in between light posts while going down the road, or not stepping on cracks in pavement.

It's a bit different. With Tourettes, the part of the brain that controls impulses is malfunctioning. That specific tick does resemble OCD I guess, but I had others that were more of a Tourettes sort.

One of them was, I would bite small parts of the inside of my cheek off and eat it. My cheek would eventually start bleeding on the inside of my mouth, but if I had gum to chew on then it was easy for the tick to be "converted" to chewing the gum, which in terms of willpower is much easier than suppressing the tick entirely. Sometimes I would have an uncontrollable desire to run as quickly as I could for about three seconds, and then it would go away (teachers thought I was just being an energetic little kid, but it was a tick).

Another was waving my arms in front of myself repeatedly and very quickly, this one would also only last for a few seconds. It looked pretty peculiar in public, as you can imagine, I had to learn to do this in my desk to avoid getting embarrassed in school.

Anyways, I think it was Tourettes, after all it does run in the family and a lot of the ticks were very Tourettes-like, so we figured it was Tourettes. Maybe I also had mild OCD, who knows :lol:

 

[GoodKat]

If you can't stop it, it's tourettes(I think). I don't have to click my teeth to the beat of music, it's just kind of like scratching an itch.