Diagnosing Mental Illness

The difficulties of diagnosing mental illness are well known.  In this enlightening article, Mike Bond discusses the difficulties of diagnosing mental illness and what exactly mental illness is. Thankfully, in the twenty first century, mental illness is now being recognised as just another illness like regulation medical conditions, and is being brought  out into the light of day.

What’s Mental Illness? What’s Mental Health? What’s the Difference?

A passing glance at these questions makes them seem irrelevant. After all, a person who sits around all day, or who remains in bed, who’s apparently lost interest in his or her hobbies and pastimes, almost certainly has depression.

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The woman who hears voices and carries on a conversation with these voices, is very probably schizophrenic.

A man who appears in his doctor’s office wearing a crown and insisting that he’s the new King of England is suffering a manic episode because of his bipolar disorder.

But how about the lady who’s feeling unhappy and discouraged? Is she necessarily depressed? Or the man parked next to you at the traffic lights is talking to himself. Is this an indication that he’s unhinged?

The main problem is that there’s no real test for mental illness. Even physical illness can be tricky, not so much to diagnose, but to state categorically that a person’s ill. If a man walks into his doctor, carrying his left leg under his arm, then yes. The cause of his problem is pretty obvious. But supposing a lady has elevated blood pressure, higher than it should be, but not dangerously so, is she ill?

.Mental illness, of course, is far more difficult to delineate. There’s the person who’s eccentric. It could be a brilliant mathematician who’s always working out theorems and formulae in his head, and talks the problems out loud while he’s at it. It’s like the stereotype of the absent minded professor. Eccentric? Yes. Mentally ill? Certainly not.

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The closest we can come to any mental illness is when a person’s a danger to himself or others, or his or her life is upset by a mental condition. Four broad fields have to be considered.

1. Behaviour. Excessive hand washing would be a warning symptom, as would house cleaning. A woman might clean her house from top to bottom, and then start all over again, because she felt the job wasn’t good enough the first time.

2. Feelings. Anyone plunged into a deep unhappiness, a sadness that simply doesn’t lift. Conversely, they may be euphoric, on a constant ‘high.’ Or again, maybe they’re filled with anger for no obvious reason.

3. Unusual Thoughts. The television is ruling your mind. You’re receiving coded messages through the screen from the newscaster, who’s part of a C.I.A. plot. They can read your mind and pass on your thoughts to some shadowy authority.

4. Physical Signs. Sweating, hyperventilating, severe palpitations, racing heart. Red flags should go up if you, or a family member, are suffering any or all of those symptoms. All doctors can do is to compare your symptoms with written guidelines, and this brings us to another problem. No two people are alike.

So it all boils down to the person suffering one or more of these conditions. It’s up to them to tell the doctor precisely how they feel. There’s still the stigma of mental illness. Even if people are suffering quite severely, they’re afraid to go to the doctor for fear of what others will say or think.

Then there are people like I was, who don’t realize anything is wrong with them. Speaking personally, I knew I felt ill in certain situations and I was never without those wretched butterflies in my stomach, but I thought everyone felt this way.

The book on which doctors rely is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM. This describes more than 300 hundred types of mental conditions, and is published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Over time, society itself forces a change in thinking. Until 1973, homosexuality was considered a mental illness, but was then removed from the DSM.

The final arbiter has to be the patient

Mike Bond discussing the difficulties of diagnosing mental illness and what exactly it is. In this, the twenty first century, mental illness is being pulled, kicking and screaming, out into the light of day.

You can read a great deal on Mike’s site, which you’ll find at http://www.panattack.com as well as a free mini course and video, which you’d be very wise to watch

Mike certainly makes some interesting points.  Mental illness is quite difficult to determine.  There will always be eccentric people, but the final arbiter should always be the person themselves.