Mental illness is characterized by a disease or symptoms that cause the individual distress, discomfort and impairs their ability to function normally in society. There are hundreds of different types of mental illness, from a severe phobia of vomiting, to a belief that everyone around you has been replaced with a very convincing double. While a lot more is known about some than others, the types of mental illness have mostly been categorized to make studying, treating and caring for patients easier.

Perhaps one of the broadest types of mental illness is the mood disorder. This umbrella term covers every mental disorder that causes disruption of the normal ebb and flow of good and bad mood. The most obvious one is depression, where sufferers feel constantly and significantly sad and despondent without feeling happy for extended periods of time. Another is manic depression where the sufferer goes through periods of hyperactivity, delusions of grandeur and risk taking, followed by periods of intense sadness, desperation and lack of motivation, neither of which are governed by anything other than the sufferers own brain. Mood disorders can sometimes be dealt with through behavioral therapy (E.G. CBT) but not all cases will respond and courses of anti-depressants or beta-blockers may be required.

Anxiety disorders are another of the many types of mental illness that doctors and medical professionals very often see. Anxiety covers a huge range, including OCD, health anxiety, specific phobias, social anxiety and agoraphobia. The first part of treatment for anxiety disorders is counseling and/or cognitive behavioral therapy to see if their problems are caused by faulty/negative thinking and whether they can be reversed. If these don't work then hypnotherapy may be tried, or anti-depressant medication.

Perhaps the most interesting to study of all the types of mental illness are the psychotic disorders, where the sufferer experiences distorted thought processes and sense of surroundings. They may well have auditory and visual hallucinations (as seen in schizophrenia) also believing things that are not true. Another of the most studied types of mental illness are eating disorders, characterized by any disturbance in a person's relationship with, thoughts about and behavior towards food. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the most common.

You may well know someone with one of these types of mental illness, particularly someone with an addiction disorder or impulse control disorder. These people often have strange addictions such as stealing (also known as kleptomania). They might be seen by society as morally wrong or dangerous to be around, which is why people with this kind of disorder need rapid treatment so that their social life stay intact.

Often people suffering from a mental disorder are put into the same group by society. This is unfortunate as these people are often well functioning in many parts of their lives except just one. Also, each of the different types of mental illness require very different treatment and even some within the same groups too. If society learns to treat people with mental illness in accordance with what they need to cope with and improve from their condition then we could move a long way from the need to resort to prescription drug treatment.

Stan Tian

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