Concepts in Psychiatry

Question 1

What is mental illness?

Answer 1

Mental illness refers to the collective of mental disorders

Abnormalities in thinking, emotion or behaviour

Associated with distress or impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning

Question 2

How is mental illness categorised?

Answer 2

• Grouping based on similar characteristics
• Checklist of symptoms and signs. Exclusion criteria
• Main systems:
  
  • ICD-10 and DSM- IV (recently updated to ICD-11 and DSM-V)
• DSM-IV used multi-axial diagnoses, but not longer used in DSM-V

Question 3

Why is mental illness described as being on a spectrum?

Answer 3

• Some disorders have symptoms that occur in a continuum but they share specific features
• It’s thought there may be a common set of underlying mechanisms
• Spectrums can represent the range of severity of a condition and may lessen the gap with what is considered as ‘normality’

Question 4

What was an organic mental disorder?

Answer 4

Attributable to cerebral or systemic disease (tumour/ physiological disturbance

Question 5

What was a functional mental disorder?

Answer 5

• No suspected organic pathology
• Concept developed at time when organic disorders were diagnosed by naked eye

Question 6

Outline the bio-psycho-social model of psychiatry

Answer 6

• Disease (biological) model - genetics, medical illness that causes mental health symptoms, head injury, substance use
• Psychodynamic model - coping skills, social skills, attachment pattern
• Behavioural model
• Cognitive model
• Social model - Finances, relationships, accommodation