Mental Illnesses: Description, Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis & Best Ways To Treat Patients

Waqar Ahmad September 28, 2021

0 59 7 minutes read

Mental Illnesses: Description, Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis & Best Ways To Treat Patients

Tackling your cognitive health can be concerning sometimes. Treating mental illnesses isn’t as overwhelming as you might think you just need to practice basic activities that make you feel better as it will ultimately lead to better coping with life.

Taking care of your mental health is important for survival and prevents accompanying diseases.

In this guide, we will navigate through the causes and symptoms of psychiatric disorders, and how the diagnosis is possibly done.

Are you a nurse? Here’s your cue to adopt some effective strategies to treat patients with mental illnesses by utilizing resources, communicating with them, and advocating for safe handling practices.

No matter what the symptoms are, asthenia might seem uncomfortable in the beginning but eventually, patients get adjusted, everybody has some limitations, and it’s important to see what works best for your patients.

Table of Contents

What Are Mental Illnesses?

What is it at its core? Mental Illnesses include a series of problems that include deviated feelings, thinking, attitude, and behavior. Initially, it’s just a mental health concern, but when a person remains under frequent stress and gets regular episodes of triggers, it will become an illness. It includes depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders, sleeping disorders and dementia.

Mental Illnesses can make a person’s life miserable so psychotherapies are required to treat it timely and effectively.

Causes & Symptoms of Mental Illnesses

Causes of Mental Illnesses

It is difficult to pinpoint just one cause, as there are a number of factors contributing to mental illnesses.

A few of the cognitive abnormalities are due to abnormal genes that are inherited from parents or due to chemical imbalances in the brain.

These mental illnesses become more intense when you have the following:

Improper and unbalanced nutrition

Use of Alcohol and other drugs
Anti-social personality and didn’t get family and friends’ support
Born through High-risk pregnancy and other kind of traumatic birth
Insomnia or other sleep disorders
Traumatic brain injury
Cognitive disorders i.e., Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Chronic conditions i.e., Diabetes, Cancer, and Hyperthyroidism
Exposure to abuse in childhood
Serious struggle with religious beliefs
History of behavioral health diseases

There could be any other factors contributing to mental illnesses as the triggers vary from person to person.

Symptoms of Mental Illnesses

Mental Illnesses are accompanied by a plethora of symptoms that are equally dangerous and further worsen a person’s health. An adult person will have mental illnesses if:

Avoid indulging in sick gatherings and regular meet-ups with friends
Indulge in alcohol and recreational drugs
Have a reduced sex drive
Have delusions and hallucinations and find difficulty in perceiving what’s real
Have insomnia and related disorders
Have fatigue and extreme stress
Suffer through irritability and anger issues
Have difficulty gauging other people’s sentiments and suffer through isolation
Have learning incapabilities
Have mood disturbances and Suicidal thoughts

However, mental illnesses affect children differently by targeting their learning abilities and these categories can be apparently interpreted by:

Extreme anxiousness due to which they are scared to go to bed
Rebellious attitude and frequent temper tantrums without any serious trigger
Their inability to interact with inheritance children and have diminished performance comparatively to others
Worsened nightmares
Hyperactive behaviors that doesn’t let them sit still or concentrate fully

However, the symptoms might be different in different people due to different human responses to triggering situations.

How To Diagnose Mental Illnesses?

How is diagnosis done? It might not be as simple as you assume as it’s a multi-step procedure where your doctor will initially do a physical examination to find any physical injury that might be caused through the mental illnesses.

Then the laboratory tests will be performed to diagnose underlying causes, which is a great possibility.

Then the patient will be asked to fill cognitive health questionnaire and other psychological evaluations will be done, there are chances the disorder isn’t identified at this stage.

Then psychologist will suggest you to another expert because mental health varies from person to person and a series of evaluations is required to make a full diagnosis.

How To Treat Patients With Mental Illnesses?

What is more critical tending to physical wounds or treating a person’s mental health which is eating him alive? Obviously the latter one!

Working with patients who have mental illnesses is challenging as each comes with a challenging personality and unraveling it sometimes takes a toll on the psychologist.

Here are some points which you can adopt to treat mental illnesses in patients:

Mental Illness Is Not A Choice But A Reality

It takes special kind skills to maintain your composure when you already have suffered through 12 hours of duty and the patient is incessantly bothering you. You might want to lose cool and give a snap of mouth but no despite of these patients being difficult, it’s a reality to understand that these patients are suffering through mental illnesses and are in need of treatment.

Remember no one decides it for himself to have psychiatric disorders, understanding it better helps you to remain empathetic and patient regardless of the difficulty.

Mental health is important so be extra vigilant to assist your patients with their psychiatric needs.

Adopt Practices Of Safe Patient Handling

Engaging with patients with mental illnesses comes with surprises that are usaully unexpected. Things could excavate quickly while tending to them which could put you and your patient at risk. Always be alert about the safe patient handling practices that harm neither one.

Make sure your workplace has specialized protocols that come in handy when a patient gets violent. The outpatient mental health facility must be equipped with personnel including nurses, therapists, coaches, and psychologists on site, and if they are unavailable on site then they must be called when an emergency arises. If none of the situations work out, call 911 to send your patient immediately to the hospital for timely aid.

Always maintain physical and verbal boundaries, and don’t make any sexual jokes or use vulgar language. Maintain open communication but abandon stuff that makes both you and your patient uncomfortable and avoid befriending on social media and exchanging gifts.

You can get help from a professional to get a better understanding of setting boundaries fid better assistance of patients with mental illnesses.

Advocate For Patients With Mental Illnesses

What do you do if you feel like things getting out of hand? You will take immediate action and the sufferings of people with mental illnesses demand attention as they aren’t capable enough to advocate for themselves.

Advocating for such affected patients is itself an empathetic gesture and you can do it in numerous ways:

To Build a connection with your patients and help them to treat their mental illnesses by communicating and listening to them.
Another way you can build a strong rapport with your patients is by simply updating them about their health and keeping their families in the loop to release their anxiety.
Trust your gut feeling and notice the subtle signs you both enhance as it names early diagnoses and you can treat your patient’s mental illnesses pretty early.

Utilize Your Resources

Having external linkages helps with treating the mental illnesses of your patients. Yes, they come as a bonus, healthcare professionals are even encouraged to take advantage of any additional resources they might have.

In some cases, you’ve been offered these resources by your employers so that you can effectively tend to your patients.

The additional health resources doesn’t cause burnout and give a healthy headspace to the nurses and other professionals, few of the helping organizations include:

National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
American Holistic Nurses Association
Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA)
American Nurses Association (ANA)
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

A strong commitment to having accessible resources that give support and advice to nurses is also essential. Along with that, there are wellness tips that help to get rid of anxiety, burnout, and stress caused due to excessive workload and hindrances eating patients.

Use Your Work Power To Bring Change

Believe it or not but you definitely make a difference. It might be easy to get frustrated but remember your involvement brings a change to your patients who are struggling with mental illnesses. Your patients trust you fully and your empathy and compassion have a positive impact on their recovery.

The way you tend to your patients brings a transformative change into their vulnerable state.

Bottom-line

In conclusion, mental illnesses include behavioral and other learning incapabilities that hinder a person from responding normally to certain situations. The causes aren’t known though but there are certain factors that contribute to further worsening including, traumatic birth, childhood abuse, use of drugs, Alzheimer’s, and brain injury. It’s usually interpreted by certain symptoms like indulging in drugs, fatigue, chronic stress, learning incapabilities, delusions, and anorexic habits.

If you are a nurse, then you need to acquire a skillset that allows you to better treat your patients by advocating for them, adopting practices of handling patients effectively, using your resources efficiently, and using your empathetic charm to be compassionate with your patients.

Give it a thorough read to understand how you can go down the path of mental illnesses.

FAQs on Mental Illnesses

What is the hardest mental illness to treat?

The most painful one is Borderline personality disorder (BPD) as its patients experience extreme agony and severe symptoms but with modern treatment methods, the symptoms have become less severe and patients function efficiently.

What are 10 mental illnesses?

These include schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, bipolar affective disorder, depression, dissociation and dissociative disorders, paranoia, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, eating disorders, and behavioral and emotional disorders in children.

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