- In this video, I want to introduce
mental disorders.
Mental disorders.
And that refers to disorders of the mind.
That's what this term mental means.
Mental disorders.
And people use a number of different terms
for the mental disorders.
You'll hear people talk about mental illness
and psychological or psychiatric disorders.
And, for the most part, people mean the same thing
when they're using those different terms.
The mental disorders are a major public health problem
involving mental abnormalities,
abnormalities of the mind,
that cause distress or disability.
And can sometimes even shorten a person's life span
from suicide or negative impacts
on other medical conditions a person might have.
Mental dysfunction affects the higher functions
of the nervous system performed by the brain.
Functions that can be grouped into categories,
such as cognition, emotion, and consciousness.
Mental disorders tend to come to the attention
of other people by abnormalities of behavior.
Or, sometimes, when somebody's describing
experiences that they're having
that are obviously abnormalities of the mind.
There are many ways that people have thought about
the causes and the classifications of mental disorders.
A big picture distinction that's useful to consider
is what has been called the biomedical
versus biopsychosocial approaches.
Let me write those out.
So the first is the biomedical,
biomedical.
And the second is called biopsychosocial.
So, bio, psycho,
social.
Now the bio part of both of these terms
is short for biological.
Or, I like to think of, as physical abnormalities.
Physical abnormalities.
And this can be things like
abnormalities in the molecules
of the cells of the brain that affect how they function.
Or abnormal patterns of connections
between the neurons in the brain.
The biomedical approach really focuses
on these physical abnormalities,
these biological abnormalities.
And the biopsychosocial approach
also considers physical abnormalities
that may contribute to the cause
or be useful for classifying a mental disorder.
But then also tries to include psychological,
and the psycho is short for psychological,
and social, or cultural factors.
The males would be important contributors,
either to the cause of the mental disorder,
or classifying the mental disorder.
Now whatever approach you take
to trying to categorize mental disorders
can be very difficult.
Because for most of them,
there are few or no useful tests,
such as brain scans or blood tests,
and the diagnosis must be made clinically
based on symptoms and signs,
the time course, risk factors,
and epidemiology.
As of 2014, when I'm making this video,
there are two classification systems
that are most commonly used
for mental disorders.
And that's the ICD-10
and the DSM-5.
The ICD-10 is short
for the International Classification of Diseases
Tenth Revision.
And this is a system
from the World Health Organization,
I'll just write WHO for short,
which is headquartered around here in Europe.
Although, really, people that work
for the World Health Organization
work all over the world.
And the other system in common use
is called the DSM-5, which is short for
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.
And this is from a group called
the American Psychiatric Association.
And I'll just write APA for short.
And they're headquartered in the United States,
around here.
Although they also have people really
that work all over the world in mental disorders.
And these two categorization systems are similar
but they're not exactly the same.
For example, the DSM-5 has more top level categories
than the ICD-10.
So, that the ICD-10, here, has an 11
top level categories.
Whereas the DSM-5 has a 20.
So, there are some differences
in just the way the systems are set up
in regards to how many categories there are,
where the different disorders get placed
into the categorization system.
Now before I end this very short introductory video
on the mental disorders,
I just want to give a couple of numbers
to give you a feel for how common these are
and how big of a public health problem.
According to the National Institutes of Health,
which is based in the United States,
around here,
each year in the United States,
just among adults,
about 25% will meet criteria
for at least one mental disorder.
And about 6% of US adults
will have a serious mental illness
that causes significant distress or disability.
And some people may even have
more than one mental disorder at a time.
So that mental illness is very common problem
and a leading cause of disability
having a major public health impact.