I frequently observe a lot of misunderstanding in my practice about what a "mental illness" is. For instance, many clients are under the impression that experiencing "mood swings" means they have Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder is much, much more serious than simple "mood swings" and involves the administration of a very serious class of drugs – mood stabilizers or antipsychotics. These drugs have very serious and sometimes permanent side effects. Mood swings are a normal human experience and not indicative of disease or illness. (See my article, "Mood Swings are Normal" for more information.) Likewise, many people are unclear about what is required to be diagnosed with Major Depression. So I decided to create a page on my blog listing the diagnostic criteria for the major mental illnesses. Especially with the mood disorders it is important to note the length of time the mood must persist in order to be consider a "mental illness" or "disorder".
The page is Diagnosing Criteria for Major Mental Illnesses. I hope people find this helpful.
It's an interesting topic diagnosing mental disorders as the term mental disorders encompasses lot of things and the implication of being diagnosed of having one has a myriad of social, legal and rights issues to the individual concerned.
I am yet to go through your blog/ article cited, in detail but basically there are two manuals which lay down the criteria to diagnose mental disorders; the DSM iv and ICD -10. The british and the american versions as usual, adding more complexity to the issue.
But diagnosing in this sense may not be essential for the purpose of immediate mangement as it is more or less for academic and statisitcal puposes in my understanding.
When it comes to mood swings having just regular mood swings may not be a disorder unless like said in the article above their intensity and duration is not great enought to be normal day to day life of the person to be affected. But there may be certain individuals with what is known as cyclothymic personality who experience more regular mood swings as a part of their personality make up and are not necessairly bipolar.
Another concern is as I mentioned earlier mental disorders encompass a wide variety of conditions which are very different from each other in terms of their origin and management and subsequent disability they bring in. For example mood disorders, Psychoses, substance abuse, learning difficulties with developmental delays and personality disorders all categorised under mental disorders.
And another noteworthy point to make is some experiences that the allopathic bio-medical model describe as symptoms or features of severe mental disorders are considered quite normal experiences in certain cultures ( shamanic experiences of lucid dreaming etc could be easily considered as visual hallucinations by enthusiastic psychiatrists) and are even induced and encouraged and are also used in a therapeutic manner! Some of them are even greatly written about here on inten.com Thus this cultural perspective is becoming more an more important in this context.
Therfore I wonder if the time has come to take a hard look at this issuse in a much mroe wholistic, deeper and complex manner ….
Any comments, suggestions and feedbacks are most welcome and thank you kellen for your article
~ R ~
Excellent comments Ruchira. Thank you.