Mental Disorders: Psychosis and Neurosis
Mental Health and Mental Disorders
Mental health is defined as full mental and social well-being. Other authors have defined it as the ability to have a job, a family, not having trouble with the law, and enjoying the leisure opportunities of life.
Conversely, a mental disorder is the loss of psychosocial well-being, coupled with a deterioration in the workplace or academic (school, college) environment and changes in usual social activities or life in relationship with others (family, friends).
In part, since this distinction is based on severity and organic base, psychotic disorders differ from neurotic ones. In general, psychotic means a state in which the patient has lost touch with reality, while neurotic refers to a state of distress and anxiety, but without losing touch with reality. At its extreme, and made famous by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, we are all “good neurotics”, while cases of psychosis are less common. The most common are: schizophrenia, most of the brain and neurological disorders (dementia), and extreme forms of depression (such as manic depression). Among the neuroses, the most typical are phobias, hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hypochondriasis (fear of disease and death), and in general all those that generate a high dose of anxiety with no disconnection from reality.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a concept that encompasses a group of serious disorders that usually begin in adolescence. Symptoms are acute disturbance of thought, perception, and emotion, affecting relationships with others, with a disturbed sense of self and a loss of sense of reality that undermines the social adaptation of the sufferer. The idea of divided mind implicit in the word schizophrenia refers to the dissociation between emotion and cognition, and not, as is commonly supposed, to a split in personality; the latter has to do with other disorders, such as multiple personality, in the Kraepelinian classification of disorders called psychopathy.
Neurosis
Neurosis or psychoneurosis are terms that describe a variety of psychological disorders that originally appeared to have been of a neurological problem, but which today are given a psychological, emotional origin. Its main feature is anxiety, personally painful and the origin of maladaptive behavior. However, neurosis is generally not severe enough to isolate someone from having a normal social life, unlike psychosis, which usually requires hospitalization.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
This disorder is the persistent intrusion of unpleasant thoughts or impulses in the consciousness of the subject, and the irresistible urge (compulsion) to develop actions or rituals to reduce anxiety. Both features are usually given together in this disorder. For example, a person obsessed with the idea that their home can be ransacked and their family attacked, may repeatedly check that all windows and doors are closed, even hundreds of times a day. Another typical case is that of people who have the compulsion to wash their hands.
Multiple Personality Disorder
This is an extremely rare disorder in which more than one personality coexists in the same individual. Often, one of the personalities is unaware of what happens while the other dominates, as displayed by periods of amnesia. The disorder often follows an extremely traumatic childhood experience.
Affective Disorders
These are those in which the predominant symptom is a disorder of mood. The most typical, depression, is characterized by sadness, guilt, despair, and a sense of personal worthlessness. Its opposite, mania, is characterized by elevated mood, an expansive, megalomaniacal, changing, and irritable state, usually alternating with a depressive state.