General Psychiatric Disorders
These include depression, anxiety, panic disorder, bipolar affective disorder, phobias, PTSD, schizophrenia
Condition Overview
“Common things occur commonly” is a general saying in medicine, meaning most conditions in clinical practice are unlikely to be rare or unknown.
General Psychiatric means conditions that occur in the general population rather than in particular groups such as the elderly, in pregnancy, in teenagers and children, or those suffering from the problems of addiction or injuries involving the brain (the essence of neuropsychiatry).
General psychiatric conditions include illnesses such as depression, anxiety and disorders of thinking and beliefs (also described as psychoses). There is more explanation about these below, under more specific headings.
General Psychiatric Disorders Diagnoses
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Anxiety is not easy to describe but we’ve all felt it. It can be a response to stress in particular situations, sometimes we can’t say what exactly is making us feel anxious, but we still feel it.
Depression
Depression is an illness. It is not the feeling of transiently feeling upset if something unpleasant has happened, which we all get and know about.
Panic Disorder
Panic is often a sudden short-lived experience of intense anxiety which can be very distressing. These experiences are often known as ‘attacks’ and when they happen they can be very frightening.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Anybody can be exposed to a shocking or frightening experience which, in its wake, causes persistent anxiety, mood changes, sleep problems and difficulty forgetting the experience. It can become overwhelming and severely disabling.
Bipolar Affective Disorder
A person’s mood may go up and down normally depending on things that happen in life or as a reaction to circumstances.
Phobias
We all know someone who gets very anxious when they see a spider, gets into a lift or has to go out of the house. These are all types of ‘phobias’.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Obsessions are recurrent thoughts that are usually not welcome and which can be upsetting. Sometimes such obsessional thoughts become linked to recurrent habits or compulsions. These then become the pattern of how we cope to avoid getting very anxious.
Psychotic Disorders
A disorder presenting with psychosis is a serious mental health problem, such as schizophrenia. Psychosis means a severe disturbance to think with the presence of delusions and sometimes hallucinations.
Problems Associated with Additions & Drug Withdrawal
Alcohol is said to be our ‘favourite drug’. So much is so good, but too much too often and we can become ‘hooked’ and dependent, leading to spiralling excess and addiction.
