Mental Health Conditions: Symptoms, Causes, and Occupational Therapy

This report provides an overview of several mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorders, and self-harm. For each condition, the report details common symptoms, potential causes, and available treatments. Anxiety is characterized by nervousness, fear, and worry, and can be treated with therapy and exercise. Depression involves a lack of interest, sleep disturbances, and feelings of guilt, and can be addressed through psychological therapies and counseling. Bipolar disorder involves alternating periods of high and low energy, and requires medication and therapy. Schizophrenia, a more critical condition, is marked by hallucinations and delusions, and necessitates medication and counseling. Eating disorders involve abnormal eating patterns and can be treated with therapy and healthy diets. Finally, self-harm is presented as the most severe stage, often requiring shock therapy and creative workshops. The document emphasizes the importance of early intervention and appropriate treatment for mental health issues. Desklib offers a wide array of study resources, including solved assignments and past papers, to support students in their academic endeavors.

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
1

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Understanding Anxiety:.............................................................................................................3
Symptoms:..............................................................................................................................3
Causes:....................................................................................................................................3
Treatments:.............................................................................................................................3
Understanding Depression:........................................................................................................4
Symptoms:..............................................................................................................................4
Causes:....................................................................................................................................4
Treatments:.............................................................................................................................4
Understanding Bipolar Disorder:...............................................................................................5
Symptoms:..............................................................................................................................5
Causes:....................................................................................................................................5
Treatments:.............................................................................................................................5
Understanding Schizophrenia:...................................................................................................6
Symptoms:..............................................................................................................................6
Causes:....................................................................................................................................6
Treatment:...............................................................................................................................6
Understanding eating disorders..................................................................................................7
Symptoms:..............................................................................................................................7
Causes:....................................................................................................................................7
Treatments:.............................................................................................................................7
2

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Understanding self-harm:...........................................................................................................8
Symptoms:..............................................................................................................................8
Causes:....................................................................................................................................8
Treatments:.............................................................................................................................8
References:.................................................................................................................................8
3

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Introduction:
Mental health disorder is not a small issue. It is a problem which gradually increases.
This problem takes a lot of time to grow but it must be treated at their root. Problems
will be started with anxiety and end with suicidal attempts or self-harm. This kind of
situation must not be ignored.
Understanding Anxiety:
Anxiety is the first step of mental health disorder. In this case, people are suffering
from human feelings mixed with nervousness, tension, fear, worry, and uneasiness.
Symptoms:
The general symptoms of this disorder are:
 Struggling with falling asleep.
 Getting irritated with a small thing.
 Concentration problem.
 Feeling restless all the time.
Causes:
 Anxiety issues can be genetic (Freeman et al. 2017).
 Environmental and social stress can also be a reason.
 Hormonal or chemical imbalance inside the body system.
Treatments:
This kind of problems can be solved with proper therapeutical treatment.
 A patient needs to know how to control their emotions or stress issues.
4

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
 A patient must do exercise daily. This will be helpful for them to reduce the
negative energy.
 A therapist needs to teach or help them to do mind relaxing.
Understanding Depression:
Depression is the second stage who are suffering from some mental health disorder.
Symptoms:
 Feeling a lack of interest in socializing.
 Having lots of difficulties in order to sleeping habits like hypersomnia, insomnia.
 having verge of guilt feelings.
 Life seems to value less for them.
 Losing weight rapidly.
Causes:
 This type of situation occurs when the neurotransmitter level changes there
position.
 This kind of disorder can be genetic.
 Environmental and social stress or pressure or trauma can also be a reason behind
depression (Hedley et al. 2018).
Treatments:
 In such a case, psychological therapies will be very much helpful for this kind of
scenarios.
5

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
 This kind of situation can be solved with a long counseling session or long
conversation or communication.
 Exercise and meditation can also give effective result in such situations.
Understanding Bipolar Disorder:
This is the third step of the mental health disorder. Things will become serious in such
cases.
Symptoms:
Some major symptoms are:
 Sometimes having lots of energy sometimes feeling very low.
 Sometimes the patient sleeps a lot sometimes throughout a day. Sometimes
having lots of difficulties falling asleep.
 Sometimes having high appetite sometimes having less.
Causes:
 Hormonal imbalance is the major cause behind this kind of disorder (Malhi and Outhred
2016).
 Sometimes a person born with this disorder. Thus, in such a case, it is considered as
genetic.
 Excessive social stress, competition, trauma, abuse is the reason behind this situation.
Treatments:
 In such cases, medication is necessary along with effective cognitive therapy.
 In such case, communicational, social and cultural therapy is very effective.
6

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
 Meditation and daily exercise play a very important role in this therapeutic
session.
 Healthy and proper diet is also a very important factor for the therapeutic session.
Understanding Schizophrenia:
This is the fourth step of mental health disorder. This is the most critical condition of
mental health.
Symptoms:
The common symptoms are as follows:
 Schizophrenic persons are mostly affected by hallucination and delusions
(Painter et al. 2019).
 lack of social interest.
 Feeling less motivated.
Causes:
Some common reasons are:
 This kind of problems can be inherited genetically.
 Hormonal changes such as imbalances of dopamine and neurotransmitter.
 Family and social pressure and stress is the pivotal cause of such condition.
Treatment:
 Medication is very important. But still, proper counseling and cognitive
therapy is the only way out.
 Meditation and daily exercise is another important factor for psychotherapy.
 Cognitive and communicational therapy is also having a very important role
7

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Understanding eating disorders
Eating disorder is the fifth step of the mental health problem. This kind of scenario
comes either excessive eating or less eating (Treasure and Todd 2016).
Symptoms:
Most common symptoms are as follows:
 Frequent weight gain or frequent weight loss.
 Unusual and abnormal eating pattern.
 Sleeplessness which is often called as insomnia.
 Poor oral health and digestive system.
Causes:
There are some major causes are as follows:
 This kind of situation occurs mostly for stress and depression as well.
 This kind of disorder also can be genetic.
 Hormonal and chemical imbalance inside the body.
 People who are associated with sports sometimes got affected by this kind of
disorder.
Treatments:
 meditation and daily exercise is an effective therapy for recovering this problem.
 The therapists must encourage them to live a less stressful life.
 A healthy diet is also being a part of this therapeutical session.
8

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Understanding self-harm:
Self-harm is actually the final and worse step is the case of mental health problems. N
such case people will become violent and ferocious.
Symptoms:
There are no actual symptoms. People become violent and out of control. They are staying at
the edge of their emotion. In such cases people want to take some drastic steps like suicidal
attempts, cutting or harming himself or herself (Marchant et al. 2017).
Causes:
The reason behind this situation is all of those which are mentioned above. Mostly this kind
of situation arouses when that person an not get proper treatment at the previous steps.
Treatments:
In such case as the affected person become out of control thus only shock therapy will
become helpful. Sometimes meditations, daily exercise, cultural therapy, the creative
workshop will be effective.
References:
Freeman, D., Reeve, S., Robinson, A., Ehlers, A., Clark, D., Spanlang, B. and Slater, M.,
2017. Virtual reality in the assessment, understanding, and treatment of mental health
disorders. Psychological medicine, 47(14), pp.2393-2400.
Hedley, D., Uljarević, M., Wilmot, M., Richdale, A. and Dissanayake, C., 2018.
Understanding depression and thoughts of self-harm in autism: a potential mechanism
involving loneliness. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 46, pp.1-7.
9

MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Malhi, G.S. and Outhred, T., 2016. Therapeutic mechanisms of lithium in bipolar disorder:
recent advances and current understanding. CNS drugs, 30(10), pp.931-949.
Marchant, A., Hawton, K., Stewart, A., Montgomery, P., Singaravelu, V., Lloyd, K., Purdy,
N., Daine, K. and John, A., 2017. A systematic review of the relationship between internet
use, self-harm and suicidal behaviour in young people: The good, the bad and the
unknown. PLoS One, 12(8), p.e0181722.
Painter, J.M., Stellar, J.E., Moran, E.K. and Kring, A.M., 2019. A multicomponent approach
toward understanding emotion regulation in schizophrenia. Journal of clinical
psychology, 75(1), pp.178-189.
Treasure, J. and Todd, G., 2016. Interpersonal maintaining factors in eating disorder: Skill
sharing interventions for carers. In Bio-psycho-social contributions to understanding eating
disorders (pp. 125-137). Springer, Cham.
10