Understanding Mental Illness: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Stigma

1. Mental Illness: An Overview Mental illnesses are medical conditions that can disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Mental illnesses are brain-based conditions that often result in a variety of symptoms that can impair daily life. Mental Illnesses need on-going treatment and doctors visits in order to manage the condition (just as a severe physical illness, such as cancer, would)

2. Overview of Mental Illness Mental illnesses include depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, borderline personality disorder, addictive disorders, eating disorders, and many others. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States.

3. Prevalence One in four adults—approximately 60 million Americans— experiences a mental health disorder in a given year. One in 17 lives with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disorder and about one in 10 children lives with a serious mental or emotional disorder. Mental illness usually strike individuals in the prime of their lives, often during adolescence and young adulthood. All ages are susceptible, but the young and the old are especially vulnerable.

4. What is Stigma? Three out of four people with a mental illness report that they have experienced stigma. Stigma is a mark of disgrace that sets a person apart. When a person is labelled by their illness they are seen as part of a stereotyped group. Negative attitudes create prejudice which leads to negative actions and discrimination.

5. Stigma brings harmful experiences and feelings: • Reluctance to seek help or treatment • Lack of understanding by family, friends, co-workers or others you know • Fewer opportunities for work, school or social activities or trouble finding housing • Bullying, physical violence or harassment • Health insurance that doesn't adequately cover your mental illness treatment • The belief that you'll never be able to succeed at certain challenges or that you can't improve your situation

6. Treatment Methods Early identification and treatment is of vital importance; By ensuring access to the treatment and recovery supports that are proven effective, recovery is accelerated and the further harm related to the course of illness is minimized.

7. Treatment Services to optimize recovery usually include some combination of psychosocial supports (e.g. family involvement, work or school support, psychotherapy and self-management strategies) and medications (to reduce symptom intensity). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – type of psychotherapy that changes patterns of thinking and/or behavior that are behind people's difficulties, in order to change the way they feel. Unfortunately, fewer than one-third of adults and one-half of children with diagnosed mental health disorders receive treatment every year.

8. Highly Treatable The best treatments for serious mental illnesses today are highly effective; between 70 and 90 percent of individuals have significant reduction of symptoms and improved quality of life with a combination of pharmacological and psychosocial treatments and supports.