When people talk about mental health challenges, there’s a tendency to lump everything into one big bucket. But just like a cold is different from the flu, there are different types of mental health conditions. They come with different symptoms and different recommended treatments, too.
Understanding the differences in mental health conditions is important for multiple reasons. Not only can it help you gain insight to determine if any of the various types of mental health conditions play a role in your personal wellness, but it can also provide empathetic understanding toward others who are dealing with mental health challenges.
So, let’s look at five of the different types of mental health conditions. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it’s a starting point. If you want to dig deeper into the many types of mental health conditions, we recommend this resource from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
Mood disorders
Mood disorders are characterized by persistent and/or significant changes in mood. When you think about mood disorders, the one that probably immediately comes to mind is major depressive disorder, or what most people simply call depression. You can also deal with a substance-induced mood disorder, mood disorders brought on by the seasons (seasonal affective disorder), bipolar disorder, and more.
Ultimately, if you live with this kind of mental health challenge, your body and brain struggle to keep things regulated in a way that impacts your mood on a regular basis.
Anxiety disorders
Do you find yourself experiencing persistent and excessive worry or fear? If so, you might be living with a type of disorder. Generalized anxiety disorder, which causes a pervasive sense of worry in your life, falls into this category. So does panic disorder, which causes panic attacks, and specific phobias.
Plenty of people worry from time to time. But if you walk around feeling like you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, you could be dealing with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders may interfere with an individual’s daily life, making it difficult to complete tasks, maintain relationships, or engage in enjoyable activities.
Eating disorders
As the name suggests, these disorders affect your relationship with food. Eating disorders refer to a group of mental health conditions that promote an unhealthy relationship with food, body weight, and body image. You might live with anorexia nervosa, in which incorrect perceptions about your own size and a fear of weight gain lead to highly restricted eating. Or you could deal with bulimia nervosa, causing cycles of binging and purging. Eating disorders can vary significantly and tend to encourage abnormal habits in relation to food.
Check in with your relationship with food. If it plays a huge role in your life — and not in a positive way — it might help you to talk with someone.
Trauma-related disorders
Researchers are continuously studying to understand the complex nature that motivates many of the types of mental health conditions. But we know that conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develop as your brain tries to cope with a serious stressor or trauma.
Additionally, disorders such as acute stress disorder and adjustment disorder can occur after an individual has gone through a troubling experience that takes time for recovery.
Psychotic disorders
These conditions cause you to lose touch with reality. This leads to symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, and unusual disorganized behaviors.
The most well-known psychotic disorder is schizophrenia. Many people think that this disorder is characterized by auditory hallucinations, but it can involve much more than that. Schizophrenia involves a range of impairing symptoms that affect an individual’s ability to think, feel, and function in daily life. It can cause you to lose your connections with people and interest in things you cared about before, a lot like depression. Other types of psychotic disorders can include brief psychotic disorder, delusional disorder, and schizoaffective disorder.
It’s important to mention that this list only includes a very brief handful of some of the more common mental health conditions. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) includes about 20 conditions chapters and roughly 300 disorders. Ultimately, if this list shows you anything, it’s that mental health is just as varied and complicated as physical health. And just like treating a physical illness, the right diagnosis is key to treating mental illness.
Fortunately, experts study specifically to be able to properly diagnose people and connect them to the right treatment for them. If you think you might be dealing with one of these types of mental health conditions, our team can be a great place to start. Contact our mental health experts to explore what therapy could do for you today.
