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First, let's clarify what a mental
illness is and is not. Mental health professionals use symptom criteria from a
diagnostic manual, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, Fourth Edition, or DSM-IV, to determine the presence of a mental
illness, now more commonly referred to as a “mental disorder.”
According to DSM-IV, a mental disorder is
defined as “a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or
pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present
distress or disability or with significantly increased risk of suffering,
death, pain, or disability, or an important loss of freedom.” Many of the
disorders in the DSM-IV include anxiety as a prominent symptom. Further,
introductory psychology textbooks generally recognize a mental disorder as a harmful
dysfunction in which behavior becomes unusual, disturbing, unhelpful, and
unjustifiable.
Therefore, if your problems with
anxiety seem atypical, distressing, and markedly interfere with your
functioning, you may have a mental disorder. This may be the result of a
variety of causes—for example, the structure of the brain, the way the brain
cells chemically interact, increased stress, and learned ways of thinking and
behaving.
What a mental illness is not,
however, is an indication that a person has weak character or limited moral
development. Unfortunately, this is the stigma we may carry around or worry
about. Mental illness also does not automatically imply that the sufferer is
“crazy” or of unsound mind. The truth is that most mental illnesses do not lead
to a loss of one's grip on reality (psychosis). Anxiety disorders are rarely
associated with psychosis, and sufferers are unlikely to appear any different
than the average person.
Source: The Anxiety Answer book by Laurie Helgoe,PhD, Laura R. Wilhelm, PhD, Martin J. Kommor, MD
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