Paper Example. Mental Health Disorders and Diagnosis

Various health conditions affect behaviors, thinking, and mood (Coates, 2017). This paper will look at mental health disorders, their symptoms, their implication, and the DMS-V criteria for diagnosing mental health disorders.

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Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe mental condition where people interpret real situations abnormally. The condition occurs in the early to mid and late 20s to men and women consecutively (CrahCourse, 2014). The disease manifests gradually to some people triggered by trauma or stress. However, no specific condition that triggers the disorder.

Symptoms of schizophrenia are:

• Dis-contact with the reality
• The existence of psychotic symptoms impairs an individual ability to function normally, For example, delusional thoughts, inappropriate laughter, withdrawal, and lack of interest of family members and friends and inattentiveness.
• Disorganized thinking and speech (CrashCourse, 2014.)
• The patient has false beliefs that are not realistic (Delusions).
• Stories of persecution and paranoia
• Perpetual disturbance and hallucinations; a person hears voices in the mind that are either internally or externally generated.
• The person exhibits disorderly, abnormal, and discordant habits and emotions, which are usually triggered by past episodes, for example, death.

Schizophrenia disease has been associated with brain abnormalities. Most of schizophrenic patients have extra dopamine and neurotransmitter receptors that regulate emotion, brain pleasures, and reward centers. This effect triggers brain functionality leading to hallucinations and other brain stimuli that make the brain lose the capacity to differentiate between internal and external stimuli.

The DMS-V criteria for Schizophrenia 295.90 (F20.9) are as follows:

• A person experiences two or more delusions, disorganized speech, hallucinations, catatonic behaviors, and negative symptoms for a portion of one month.
• A significant amount of time spent since the disturbance started
• Failure to achieve academic and occupational functioning in adolescents and children
• Disturbance sigs that last for over six months
• The occurrence of disturbances that are not linked to the physiological effects of a substance
• If an individual has a history of communication disorder and autism spectrum disorder

Dissociative disorders

Dissociative disorders are characterized by dissociation of conscious awareness and previous thoughts, memories, and feelings (CrashCourse, 2014). A person with dissociative disorder develops various personalities, such as dissociative amnesia. It occurs when a person cannot remember specific events. Dissociative fugue transpires when people travel, but they are not aware of their identity. Last is dissociative identity disorder, which occurs when a person shows over one altering and distinct personality (Dai, Liu, Kaminga, Deng, Lai, Yang, & Wen, 2018). Symptoms of dissociative disorder are loss of memory, which is triggered by memory, emotional detachment, lack of self-identity, and out-of-body experience. The implication of dissociating disorders is that it appears in different personalities, so ophthalmologists should advance research skills to detect all the variations.

DMS-V criteria of dissociative disorders:

• A person exhibits two or more personality states, each with distinct enduring patterns relating to thinking about self and environment. Personality states are viewed as "experiences of possession." The sates include discontinuity in the sense of person and agency followed by alterations of memory, consciousness, perception, behaviors, sensory-motor, and cognition.
• The occurrence of amnesia. The inability of a person to recall important information and traumatic events. For a patient to be diagnosed with dissociate criterion, amnesia must also occur for everyday life and not only due to a traumatic event.
• The person must have trouble functioning in significant areas of life or distressed by the disorder. It is a standard criterion for all severe mental illnesses. The diagnosis is not appropriate if the signs exhibited by the patient does not cause distress or normal functioning.
• Disturbance experience should not be associated with individual religious factors or cultural practices. The purpose of this DID criterion is to eliminate any religious factors.
• Symptoms exhibited by the patient are not as a result of general medication, the psychological effect of substances (Dai et al., 2018).

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

OCD is a debilitating condition pervaded by undesirable repetitive thoughts that later develop to obsessions that occasionally go along with actions, thus becoming compulsions. Constraint is the state of being forced to do something (Emanuel & Bauer, 2020). People suffering from these compulsions use ritualistic behaviors to relieve unbearable anxiety and intensity. Symptoms of OCD are repetitive acts such as regular washing of hands, counting steps when walking, thoughts of fear, violent thoughts, fear of losing control, fear of having required things. The long-term effects of OCD develop because people suffering from this condition live in low quality of life (Emanuel & Bauer, 2020). The commonly cited long-term effects of OCD are; anxiety, depression, and high risk of abusing drugs, OCD requires urgent treatment to prevent its worst effects.

DSM-5 Criteria for OCD (300.3):

• The presence of obsessions is characterized by periodic and persistent thoughts, instinct, or urges a person experience during disturbance and is usually marked by distress or anxiety. Second, neurosis is characterized by the individual suppressing recurrent thoughts. The presence of compulsions is characterized by repetitive behaviors such as handwashing. An individual is driven to perform repetitive actions to respond to constraints. The second presence of constraints implies that compulsive behaviors reduce anxiety, distress, or situation.
• The compulsions or obsessions cause clinically significant distress in occupation, social, and other crucial areas of functionality (Coates, 2017).
• The compulsions or obsessions are not caused by the physiological effects of medication or other substance use.
• Symptoms of any other mental disorder do not better explain symptoms and disturbance shown by the patient. The specification should be made if the individual has a past or current history of tic disorder.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar are mood disorders characterized by modified lethargy of depression, hopelessness, and the overexcited mania. Mania is more chronic cases. Patients with bipolar disorder usually flip back and forth of manic, depressive, and normal phases in a day, for a week or month (Uribe & Torres, 2018). Symptoms of Bipolar Disorders are restless, intense, low energy, loss of touch with reality, loss of interest in daily activities, hopelessness, and lack of purpose, little motivation, optimistic hyperactivity, and suicidal thoughts. Mood disorders are usually caused by a blend of environmental, genetic, psychological, and biological factors. The study carried out about the identical twins revealed that one of them has a bipolar disorder, and the other has 70% of being diagnosed with bipolar irrespective of whether they will grow up together or not (Uribe & Torres, 2018). Thus bipolar disease implies that even though life events cannot trigger it, stressful life events cause depressive episodes to a person with pre-existing health conditions.

Bipolar Disorder DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria:

• For a person to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, at least one episode of mania or hypomania must be present.
• For the patient's condition to be regarded as mania, the expansive, irritable, or elevated mood must be present nearly every day for at least one week. To be considered as hypomania, the mood must be present during the day for at least four consecutive days.
• During the mania and hypomania period, the patient must experience at least three of the following symptoms; decreased sleep, inflated self-esteem, racing thoughts, easily distracted, increased talkativeness, psychomotor agitation, and engagement in risky activities.
• Depressive bipolar disorder is characterized by depressive episodes that result in a depressed mood. For a person to be diagnosed with major depressive episodes, over five of the following symptoms must be experienced or shown by the patient; significant depressed mood during the day, decreased appetite, notable weight loss, loss of interest, fatigue, guilt, and recurrent suicidal thoughts.

References

Coates, R. (2017). Assessment of perinatal mental health problems (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sussex).

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/67082/1/Coates,%20Rose.pdfCrashCourse. (2014). OCD and Anxiety Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #29. (YouTube).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX7jnVXXG5o&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6&t=197sCrashCourse. (2014). Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #32. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxktavpRdzU&t=26sCrashCourse. (2014). Depressive and Bipolar Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMlHkWKDwM&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtOPRKzVLY0jJY-uHOH9KVU6&t=17s

Dai, W., Liu, A., Kaminga, A. C., Deng, J., Lai, Z., Yang, J., & Wen, S. W. (2018). Prevalence of acute stress disorder among road traffic accident survivors: a meta-analysis. BMC psychiatry, 18(1), 188.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29895273/Emanuel, S., & Bauer, M. (2020). Diagnosing bipolar disorders: ICD-11 and beyond. International Journal of Bipolar Disorders, 8(1). https://journalbipolardisorders.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40345-019-0177-5

Uribe, E., & Torres, M. (2018). Neuropsychological screening for schizophrenia: a brief tool to assess subtypes of schizophrenia. Rev Neurobiology, 9(21), 240918. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181984/