Psychiatric services focus on mental and emotional well-being. This primary care practice provides all the health services you need to live your best life. With psychiatric services, the team collaborates with psychiatric professionals who can diagnose, treat, and prevent mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Your mental well-being affects how you think, feel, and behave. When you’re struggling with a mental or emotional problem, it affects your whole health.
Today, let us know more about standard psychiatric services so you can ensure holistic health is addressed, no matter your health issues. Read until the end and discover the types and symptoms of psychiatric disorders and how they can be treated.
What is a Psychiatric Disorder?
Mental health professionals diagnose psychiatric disorders that greatly disturb one’s thinking, moods, and behavior. These disorders can seriously increase the risk of disability, pain, death, or loss of freedom. In addition, symptoms must be more severe than the expected response to an upsetting event, such as normal grief after losing a loved one.
Examples of Psychiatric Disorders
Psychiatric disorders have already been identified, so there’s a chance that you or someone you know has been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Here are some examples:
- Addictive behaviors
- Anxiety disorders
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Personality disorders
- Schizophrenia
Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorders
Here are some examples of on-going signs and symptoms of psychiatric disorders:
- A change in sex drive
- Confused thinking
- Deep, on-going sadness or feeling “down”
- Delusions, paranoia, or hallucinations
- Drug or alcohol abuse
- Excessive anger, hostility, and violence
- Extreme mood changes, shifting quickly and often from highs to lows
- Extreme tiredness, low energy, or sleeping problems
- Reduced ability to concentrate
- Inability to manage day-to-day stress and problems
- Marked changes in eating habits
- Strong feelings of fear, worry, or guilt
- Suicidal thinking
- Trouble understanding situations and other people
- Withdrawal from other people and from activities you usually enjoy
Furthermore, psychiatric disorders may also result in physical symptoms like headaches, stomach pains, and back pains. After being evaluated for psychiatric disorders, tell your doctor or healthcare provider if you’re also experiencing any physical symptoms, including unexplained aches and pains.
Types of Psychiatric Disorders
The following classes or categories are some of the main types of psychiatric disorders:
- Anxiety Disorders – these psychiatric disorders involve anxiety, focusing on harmful or dangerous outcomes that could occur, worrying fearfully and excessively about them. Examples are panic disorders, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and phobias or extreme or irrational fears of specific things.
- Bipolar and Related Disorders – are disorders in which episodes of mania or periods of excessive activity, excitement, and energy alternates with periods of depression.
- Depressive Disorders – are psychiatric disorders characterized by extreme feelings of sadness and worthlessness, along with a significant reduction of interest in previously-enjoyed activities. Major depressive disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, are some examples.
- Disruptive, Impulse-Control, and Conduct Disorders – are disorders that show symptoms of difficulty when they manifest in people, along with emotional and behavioral self-control. Examples include kleptomania or repeated stealing, and intermittent explosive disorder.
- Dissociative Disorders – are psychiatric disorders that disrupt a person’s sense of self, like dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorders.
- Elimination Disorders – are disorders related to inappropriate eliminations or releases of urine or stool, either on purpose or by accident. Enuresis or bedwetting is an example of this psychiatric disorder.
- Feeding and Eating Disorders – disorders or disturbances related to the process of eating, like anorexia and bulimia nervosa, as also binge eating disorders.
- Gender Dysphoria – is a psychiatric disorder stemming from distress paired with a person’s stated desire, especially those who want to be of a different gender. The diagnostic criteria differ somewhat by age for children, adolescents, and adults.
- Neurocognitive Disorders – are disorders that affect a person’s ability to think and reason. Examples include delirium and disorders of thinking and reasoning, usually caused by traumatic brain injuries or Alzheimer’s disease.
- Neurodevelopmental Disorders – many of the psychiatric disorders in this category often begin in infancy or childhood, usually before children start school. Examples include ADHD or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and learning disorders.
- Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders – are disorders that make people experience repeated and unwanted obsessions involving urges, thoughts, or images. They also make people have compulsions or feel driven to take repeated actions in response to them. Examples include OCD or obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarding disorder, and trichotillomania or hair-pulling disorder.
- Paraphilic Disorders – are psychiatric disorders that are sexual-interest-related. Examples include pedophilic disorders, sexual sadism disorders, and voyeuristic disorders.
- Personality Disorders – involve lasting patterns of emotional instability and unhealthy behaviors that severely disrupt people’s daily living and relationships. Examples include antisocial, borderline, and narcissistic personality disorders.
- Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders – are psychiatric disorders that cause detachment from reality. Diagnosed patients experience hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech and thinking. Schizophrenia is perhaps the best-known example from this group, although, at times, detachment from reality can also affect those already suffering from other psychiatric disorders.
- Sexual Dysfunctions – are disorders of sexual response, which include diagnoses of erectile disorder, premature ejaculation, and female orgasmic disorder.
- Sleep-Wake Disorders – are severe psychiatric disorders connected with sleeping. These disorders include insomnia, sleep apnea, nightmare disorders, and restless legs syndrome.
- Somatic Symptoms and Related Disorders – these disorders may cause distressing and incapacitating physical symptoms without any apparent medical cause. “Somatic” is a term that means “of the body.” Examples include illness anxiety disorder, somatic symptom disorder or formerly called hypochondriasis, and factitious disorder.
- Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders – these psychiatric diagnoses have challenges related to excessive use of alcohol, opioids like oxycodone and morphine, hallucinogens, recreational drugs, and six (6) other types of drugs. Gambling disorders are also included in this classification.
- Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders – are psychiatric disorders that develop during or after events that can be stressful or traumatic to the life of the person involved. Examples include PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder.
In addition, other mental disorders that can be considered psychiatric include disorders that are due to other medical conditions but don’t meet all the requirements for any of the earlier-mentioned psychiatric disorder groups.
When Do Mental Health Concerns Become Psychiatric Disorders?
If you’re like most patients, perhaps you’ve had mental health concerns now and then, like depression after losing a loved one or a job. Although these concerns are typically time-limited, eventually, you start feeling better after a while.
That’s not true, however, with psychiatric disorders. Symptoms of psychiatric disorders are often on-going, longer-lasting, and will frequently upset you and those around you. Furthermore, these disorders also interfere with your productivity and ability to do day-to-day tasks.
When the stress of attempting to cope with the symptoms you experience becomes more and more unbearable, typical treatments involve a combination of psychiatric disorder medications and psychotherapy or talk therapy.
The Bottomline
Psychiatric disorders are serious matters that need serious attention. If you or you know someone experiencing any of the disorders mentioned above, immediately contact your trusted mental health experts
