Mental Illness Vs Mental Disorder

Mental Illness Vs Mental Disorder

Mental illness is a disorder that impacts your emotions, thinking or behavior in one way or another.

Psychological disorders are medical diagnoses and should be treated as such.

Treatment of mental illnesses aims to improve people’s feelings of well-being and enable them to better interact with their social and physical environments. It differs from other diseases which often seek to restore normal physiological mechanisms.

Mental illness is caused by a complex combination of genetics, brain chemistry, environment and life experiences that can shape how you feel. Stress in your job or home may make you more susceptible to developing mental health conditions as can having close family members with such conditions.

Symptoms are generally linked with significant distress or impairment in daily functioning (B). This criterion is the sole clinical criteria listed in DSM-5, providing a relatively valid and reliable indicator for underlying dysfunction.

It is impossible to be certain if a disorder has taken place or caused any specific level of distress or impairment, but if someone has an illness on the list of DSM-5 diagnoses and their symptoms meet clinical criteria for diagnosis, then they are likely to have been diagnosed with mental disorder.