Mental disorders appear in both he althy and sick people. What in the world of the psyche is the norm and what is not anymore? What can make mental disorders worse? Learn how to recognize a mental illness.
Since minor functional abnormalities occur in all people, how can they be distinguished from symptomsof mental illness , which may be anxious? First, disorders in he althy people are short-lived and transient. These are episodes after which everything returns to normal. On the other hand,mental disordersappearing in diseases are frequent, long-lasting and repetitive. Moreover, they are burdensome and make it difficult for a person to function on a daily basis. The second important criterion of normality is "being aware". A he althy person knows that he is experiencing some kind of disorder: "I know that these are spots in front of the eyes, not black butterflies." The sick person cannot separate the real from the imaginary. She treats her own imaginations as objectively existing, and her fantasies merge with the realities.
Mental illness: it can aggravate the disorder
- Fatigue: If you are exhausted, weakened, or have been awake for a long time, your nervous system can "produce" more mistakes, false interpretations of sensory data, or "false alarms".
- Stress : when you do many things at once, live in tension, contact with reality may become loosened. Then more activities are performed automatically, which can lead to bizarre behavior (e.g. perseveration, intrusive thoughts).
- Strong emotions: People who are very afraid or want something may experience the illusion that what they fear or want is happening. For example, when a woman walks through a park in the evening and feels fear, she may "see" the attacker behind the tree.
- Altered states of consciousness: More psychological abnormalities appear, for example, on the verge of sleep and waking, in shallow hypnotic trances (e.g. someone has focused so much on the movie they are watching that they feels like a mosquito bites him), in particularly blissful states (e.g. right after orgasm).
- Diseases: severe fever, prolonged anemia also reduce the efficiency of "normal" mental processes (this is called ego weakening)the person may then have more difficulty distinguishing between what is true and false, he may play the role of a child (regression) and have more different kinds of illusions.
- Pharmacological agents: There are substances designed only to cause hallucinations (eg LSD). Many other psychoactive substances may increase the appearance of various disorders or dysfunctions, e.g. alcohol, certain medications, etc.
More:
Everything normal
I already know it from somewhere, i.e. déja vu
Compulsive thoughts, or incidental thoughts
"Zdrowie" monthly