Types of Mental Health Disorders

You might be given a diagnosis of BPD if you experience at least five of the following things, and they’ve lasted for a long time or have a big impact on your daily life:

• You feel very worried about people abandoning you, and would do anything to stop that happening.
• You have very intense emotions that last from a few hours to a few days and can change quickly (for example, from feeling very happy and confident to suddenly feeling low and sad).
• You don’t have a strong sense of who you are, and it can change significantly depending on who you’re with.
• You find it very hard to make and keep stable relationships.
• You feel empty a lot of the time.
• You act impulsively and do things that could harm you (such as binge eating, using drugs or driving dangerously).
• You often self-harm or have suicidal feelings.
• You have very intense feelings of anger, which are really difficult to control.
• When very stressed, you may also experience paranoia or dissociation.

Depression is a low mood that lasts for a long time, and affects your everyday life.

In its mildest form, depression can mean just being in low spirits. It doesn’t stop you leading your normal life but makes everything harder to do and seem less worthwhile. At its most severe, depression can be life-threatening because it can make you feel suicidal or simply give up the will to live.

We all have times when our mood is low, and we’re feeling sad or miserable about life. Usually these feelings pass in due course.

But if the feelings are interfering with your life and don’t go away after a couple of weeks, or if they come back over and over again for a few days at a time, it could be a sign that you’re experiencing depression.

If you are given a diagnosis of depression, you might be told that you have mild, moderate or severe depression. This describes what sort of impact your symptoms are having on you currently, and what sort of treatment you’re likely to be offered. You might move between different mild, moderate and severe depression during one episode of depression or across different episodes.

Recreational drugs are substances people may take:

• to give themselves a pleasurable experience
• to help them feel better if they are having a bad time
• because their friends are using them
• to see what it feels like.

They include alcohol, tobacco (nicotine), substances such as cannabis, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, and some prescribed medicines.

An eating problem is any relationship with food that you find difficult.

Food plays an important part in our lives and most of us will spend time thinking about what we eat. Sometimes we may try to eat more healthily, have cravings, eat more than usual or lose our appetite. Changing your eating habits every now and again is normal.

But if food and eating feels like it’s taking over your life then it may become a problem.

Lots of people think that if you have an eating problem you will be over- or underweight, and that being a certain weight is always associated with a specific eating problem. This is a myth. Anyone, regardless of age, gender or weight, can be affected by eating problems.

Hoarding is acquiring or saving lots of things regardless of their value.

If you hoard, you might:

• have very strong positive feelings whenever you get more items
• feel very upset or anxious at the thought of throwing or giving things away
• find it very hard to decide what to keep or get rid of.

Hypomania and mania are periods of over-active and excited behaviour that have a significant impact on your day-to-day life.

• Hypomania is a milder version of mania that lasts for a short period (a few days)
• Mania is a more severe form that lasts for a longer period (a week or more)

They can be experienced as part of a mood disorder – such as bipolar disorder, seasonal affective disorder, postpartum psychosis or schizoaffective disorder – or as a diagnosis on their own.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder. It has two main parts: obsessions and compulsions.

• Obsessions are unwelcome thoughts, images, urges, worries or doubts that repeatedly appear in your mind. They can make you feel very anxious (although some people describe it as ‘mental discomfort’ rather than anxiety).
• Compulsions are repetitive activities that you do to reduce the anxiety caused by the obsession. It could be something like repeatedly checking a door is locked, repeating a specific phrase in your head or checking how your body feels.

Panic attacks are a type of fear response. They’re an exaggeration of your body’s normal response to danger, stress or excitement.

During a panic attack you might feel very afraid that you’re:

• losing control
• going to faint
• having a heart attack
• going to die.

Personality disorders are a type of mental health problem where your attitudes, beliefs and behaviours cause you longstanding problems in your life.

The word ‘personality’ refers to the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that makes each of us the individuals that we are. We don’t always think, feel and behave in exactly the same way – it depends on the situation we are in, the people with us and many other things.

However, if you have a personality disorder you may often experience difficulties in how you think about yourself and others. And you may find it difficult to change these unwanted patterns.

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder. It is an extreme form of fear or anxiety triggered by a particular situation (such as going outside) or object (such as spiders), even when there is no danger.

For example, you may know that it is safe to be out on a balcony in a high-rise block, but feel terrified to go out on it or even enjoy the view from behind the windows inside the building. Likewise, you may know that a spider isn’t poisonous or that it won’t bite you, but this still doesn’t reduce your anxiety.

Someone with a phobia may even feel this extreme anxiety just by thinking or talking about the particular situation or object.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder which you may develop after being involved in, or witnessing, traumatic events. The condition was first recognised in war veterans and has been known by a variety of names, such as ‘shell shock’. But it’s not only diagnosed in soldiers – a wide range of traumatic experiences can cause PTSD.

When you go through something you find traumatic it’s understandable to experience some symptoms associated with PTSD afterwards, such as feeling numb or having trouble sleeping. This is sometimes described as an ‘acute stress reaction’.

Many people find that these symptoms disappear within a few weeks, but if your symptoms last for longer than a month, you might be given a diagnosis of PTSD. Your GP might refer you to a specialist before this if your symptoms are particularly severe.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a very severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), which can cause many emotional and physical symptoms every month during the week or two before you start your period. It is sometimes referred to as ‘severe PMS’.

While many people who are able to have periods may experience some mild symptoms of PMS, if you have PMDD these symptoms are much worse and can have a serious impact on your life. Experiencing PMDD can make it difficult to work, socialise and have healthy relationships. In some cases, it can also lead to suicidal thoughts.

You may be given a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder if you experience:

• psychotic symptoms, similar to schizophrenia, and
• mood symptoms of bipolar disorder, and
• you have both types of symptoms at the same time or within two weeks of each other

The word schizoaffective has two parts:

• ‘schizo–‘ refers to psychotic symptoms
• ‘–affective’ refers to mood symptoms

You may have times when you struggle to look after yourself, and when your doctors consider that you lack insight into your behaviour or how you are feeling. You may be quite well between episodes.

The episodes vary in length. Some people have repeated episodes but this does not necessarily happen, and it may not be a lifetime diagnosis.

You could be diagnosed with schizophrenia if you experience some of the following symptoms:

• a lack of interest in things
• feeling disconnected from your feelings
• difficulty concentrating
• wanting to avoid people
• hallucinations, such as hearing voices or seeing things others don’t
• delusions (which could include paranoid delusions) – strong beliefs that others don’t share
• disorganised thinking and speech
• not wanting to look after yourself

Delusions and hallucinations are types of psychosis. (See our information on psychosis, paranoia and hearing voices.)

Our self-esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves. If you have low self-esteem you may feel:

• like you hate or dislike yourself
• worthless or not good enough
• unable to make decisions or assert yourself
• like no one likes you
• you blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault
• guilt for spending time or money on yourself
• unable to recognise your strengths
• undeserving of happiness
• low in confidence.

Self-harm is when you hurt yourself as a way of dealing with very difficult feelings, painful memories or overwhelming situations and experiences. Some people have described self-harm as a way to:

• express something that is hard to put into words
• turn invisible thoughts or feelings into something visible
• change emotional pain into physical pain
• reduce overwhelming emotional feelings or thoughts
• have a sense of being in control
• escape traumatic memories
• have something in life that they can rely on
• punish yourself for your feelings and experiences
• stop feeling numb, disconnected or dissociated (see dissociative disorders)
• create a reason to physically care for themselves
• express suicidal feelings and thoughts without taking their own life.

We all know what it’s like to feel stressed, but it’s not easy to pin down exactly what stress means. When we say things like “this is stressful” or “I’m stressed”, we might be talking about:

• Situations or events that put pressure on us – for example, times where we have lots to do and think about, or don’t have much control over what happens.
• Our reaction to being placed under pressure – the feelings we get when we have demands placed on us that we find difficult to cope with.

There’s no medical definition of stress, and health care professionals often disagree over whether stress is the cause of problems or the result of them. This can make it difficult for you to work out what causes your feelings of stress, or how to deal with them. But whatever your personal definition of stress is, it’s likely that you can learn to manage your stress better by:

• managing external pressures, so stressful situations don’t seem to happen to you quite so often
• developing your emotional resilience, so you’re better at coping with tough situations when they do happen and don’t feel quite so stressed