Mental Health Disorders
Personality disorders are characterized by enduring, inflexible, and maladaptive patterns of behavior that are pervasive and persistent. Onset typically occurs in adolescence or young adulthood. Symptoms include patterns of distrust, suspiciousness, and odd beliefs; social detachment, discomfort, or avoidance; hypersensitivity to negative evaluation; an excessive need to be taken care of; difficulty making independent decisions; a preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and control; and inappropriate, intense, impulsive anger and behavioral expression grossly out of proportion to any external provocation or psychosocial stressors.
Psychosis disorders are characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, causing a clinically significant decline in functioning. Symptoms include an inability to initiate and persist in goal-directed activities, social withdrawal, flat or inappropriate affect, poverty of thought and speech, loss of interest or pleasure, disturbances of mood, odd beliefs and mannerisms, and paranoia.
Anxiety Disorders are characterized by excessive anxiety, worry, apprehension, and fear, or by avoidance of feelings, thoughts, activities, objects, places, or people. Symptoms and signs may include, but are not limited to, restlessness, difficulty concentrating, hyper-vigilance, muscle tension, sleep disturbance, fatigue, panic attacks, obsessions and compulsions, constant thoughts and fears about safety, and frequent physical complaints.
While Mood Disorders are characterized by an irritable, depressed, elevated, or expansive mood, or by a loss of interest or pleasure in all or almost all activities, causing a clinically significant decline in functioning. Symptoms and signs may include, but are not limited to, feelings of hopelessness or guilt, suicidal ideation, a clinically significant change in body weight or appetite, sleep disturbances, an increase or decrease in energy, psychomotor abnormalities, disturbed concentration, pressured speech, grandiosity, reduced impulse control, sadness, euphoria, and social withdrawal.
Disorders characterized by a clinically significant decline in cognitive functioning. Symptoms and signs may include, but are not limited to, disturbances in memory, executive functioning (i.e., higher-level cognitive processes, such as regulating attention, planning, inhibiting responses, and decision-making), visual-spatial functioning, language and speech, perception, insight, judgment, and insensitivity to social standards.
Developmental disorders are characterized by childhood or adolescent onset, although sometimes not diagnosed until adulthood. Symptoms may include problems learning and applying verbal or nonverbal information, visual perception, memory, or a combination of these; deficits in attention or impulse control; low frustration tolerance; excessive or poorly planned motor activity; difficulty with organizing time, space, materials, or tasks; repeated accidental injury; and issues with social skills. Symptoms and signs specific to tic disorders include sudden, rapid, recurrent, and non-rhythmic motor movements or vocalizations.
Intellectual disorders are characterized by significantly below average general intellectual functioning, significant deficits in current adaptive functioning, and appear before age 22. Signs may include, but are not limited to, poor conceptual, social, or practical skills, which are evident in their adaptive functioning.
Autism Spectrum Disorders are characterized by qualitative deficits in the development of reciprocal social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication skills, and symbolic or imaginative activity; restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities; and stagnation of development or loss of acquired skills early in life. Symptoms include abnormalities and unevenness in the development of cognitive skills; unusual responses to sensory stimuli; and behavioral difficulties, including hyperactivity, short attention span, impulsiveness, aggressiveness, or self-injurious actions.
Somatic Disorders are characterized by physical symptoms or deficits that are not intentionally produced or feigned, and that, following clinical investigation, cannot be fully explained by a general medical condition, another mental disorder, the direct effects of a substance, or a culturally sanctioned behavior or experience. These disorders may also be characterized by a preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious medical condition that has not been identified or diagnosed. Symptoms include pain and other sensory abnormalities, gastrointestinal symptoms, fatigue, a high level of anxiety about personal health status, abnormal motor movements, pseudoseizures, and pseudoneurological symptoms, such as blindness or deafness.
Trauma-related disorders are characterized by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic or stressful event, learning of a traumatic event occurring to a close family member or close friend, surviving a long-term stressful environment requiring adaptation skills, and the psychological aftermath of clinically significant effects on functioning. Symptoms include distressing memories, dreams, and flashbacks related to trauma or stressor; avoidant behavior; diminished interest or participation in significant activities; persistent negative emotional states (for example, fear, anger) or persistent inability to experience positive emotions (for example, satisfaction, affection); anxiety; irritability; aggression; exaggerated startle response; difficulty concentrating; and sleep disturbance.
Addictive disorders are characterized by compulsive seeking and taking of a substance or performing of an activity despite harmful consequences. Eating disorders are characterized by disturbances in eating behavior and preoccupation with, and excessive self-evaluation of, body weight and shape. Symptoms include restriction of energy consumption when compared with individual requirements; recurrent episodes of binge eating or behavior intended to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting, excessive exercise, or misuse of laxatives; mood disturbances, social withdrawal, or irritability; amenorrhea; dental problems; abnormal laboratory findings; and cardiac abnormalities.
