A mental illness is a health problem that significantly affects how a person feels, thinks, behaves, and interacts with other people. It is a disease that affect cognition, emotion, and behavioral control and substantially interfere both with the ability of children to learn and with the ability of adults to function in their families, at work, and in the broader society.
Mental illness tend to begin early in life and often run a chronic recurrent course. A mental health problem also interferes with how a person thinks, feels, and behaves, but to a lesser extent than a mental illness.
According to ILO, mental illness hits more human lives and gives rise to a greater waste of human resources than all other forms of disability.
Five of the 10 leading causes of disability worldwide are mental problems (major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, alcohol use and obsessive-compulsive disorders).
The illnesses have complex etiologies that involve interactions among multiple genetic and non-genetic risk factors. Gender is related to risk in many cases: males have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and sub-stance use disorders; females have higher rates of major depressive disorder, most anxiety disorders, and eating disorders.
Mental illnesses are of different types and degrees of severity. Some of the major types are depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar mood disorder, personality disorders, and eating disorders. The most common mental illnesses are anxiety and depressive disorders.
Risk of suicide is heightened for people with some mental illnesses, particularly soon after diagnosis or release from hospital.
Mental illness: Definition and problems arise from mental illness
