Psychiatric Disorders, Diseases and Drugs

There are many disorders that plague humans. Some of these disorders debilitating problems, but most are successfully treated mental issues. Some of these disorders come with problems that if left untreated can cause serious problems that affect one's life.

Though schizophrenia is a very widely known mental illness, it only makes up 1% of all humans (Pinel, 2007). Schizophrenia is a highly complex illness that is hard to teat because the side effects vary from person to person. Some of the more common symptoms are bizarre delusions - such as delusions of being controlled, delusions of persecution, and delusions of grandeur and inappropriate affect - which refers to the way schizophrenics cannot act with a proper amount of emotions to positive or negative events. Among the other symptoms are hallucinations of imaginary voices commanding the host, incoherent thoughts, and odd behavior, such as long periods of immobility, bad personal hygiene, and anti-social behavior.

Schizophrenia that is present in a person, is typically present in the parents or siblings as well. This suggests that schizophrenia is inherited from parents and is an aggressive disease. Though we know that schizophrenia is inherited from parents, are there other factors that contribute to this disease? Different types of early developmental trauma within the neurodevelopment can contribute to the susceptibility of this disease; this includes certain toxins, infections, injury, and stress.

Now that we know a little bit about this disease, we need to learn what can be done to treat this disease. The very first medicine that was developed to help treat schizophrenia was chlorpromazine in the early 1950s. Though this medicine was not originally developed as an antischizophrenic medicine, the calming effects were present in patients that had just had surgery. This seemed like it would have the same effect on patients that had problems keeping their emotions in check - such as schizophrenic patients. Though chlorpromazine does not cure this disease, it does help to ease the symptoms and severity of this illness.

Since then many different medications have been introduced and have stopped being used. As I mentioned before, schizophrenia is a very complex illness and is difficult to treat, though medications are available, many of them were taken out of rotation due to the other side effects they posed to other parts of the body.

Another relentless illness would be Tourette Syndrome. This syndrome differs greatly from the other topics that I will be discussing. Tourette syndrome does not have the same affects that other illnesses do and can very easily be treated. If left untreated the symptoms are more embarrassing that harmful to one's self or others. Typically, the symptoms of this illness are only tics.

Tics are involuntary, repetitive, and stereotyped movements or vocalizations. Though these symptoms develop early on in a child's life, their harshness grows over time, causing the problems to be more obvious, sometimes this includes cursing or lewd gestures. People that suffer from Tourette syndrome tend to suffer from ADD/ADHD and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Though one can suppress their Tourette syndrome, over time this causes for a more intense outburst. We are not sure what causes Tourette Syndrome and it is difficult to research this illness to the involuntary tics that interfere with brain imaging. Tourette Syndrome can be treated by using neuroleptics, which are captor blockers that are used for schizophrenia treatments.

Tourette Syndrome is not as uncommon as you might think. There are several well-known people that suffer from this illness, such as: Howard Hughes, Howie Mandel, Dan Ackroyd, David Beckham, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (Disabled World, 2008).

As less severe forms of mental illness, depression and mania are also well know, though they do not have the same types if effects on their hosts. Those that suffer from depression, which can be caused by any number of factors, tend to be affected all around in every aspect of their life. Though depression is the area of mental illness that contributes to lackluster behavior and sadness concerning every area of one's life, mania appears to be exactly the opposite with emotions that are characterized by overconfidence and high energy.

Mania causes one to feel invincible and as though they can achieve anything, whereas people suffering from depression feel great sadness and lack any sort of excitement. Patients that experience periods of mania suffer from a bipolar affective disorder, those that do not experience mania, suffer from unipolar affective disorder. Depression can be caused by a negative experience (such as a death of a loved one) - reactive depression, or no cause at all, which is endogenous depression.

Genetics contribute to this illness as well as other experiences, such as stressful factors that include a loss of a loved one. Regardless of the trigger, there are four different classes of drugs that treat these affective disorders. These four classes include: monoamine, oxidase inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants, lithium, and selective monoamine-reuptake inhibitors. Of the four major drug classes, three were accidental discoveries. Though not all suffers are cured by medication, it does help to treat the effects, though does not do the job on preventing recurring attacks of depression.

As another mental illness that sometimes accompanies depression, is anxiety. Anxiety is a chronic fear that is present even in the absence of threatening situations. Though anxiety seems like a normal emotion, there are people that suffer from anxiety that affects normal functioning in one's daily life. Take my anxiety for example, I sometimes suffer from such bad anxiety that I am unable to breath and when I try to take a breath it feels as though something is blocking my airway. I shake and find it extremely difficult to continue what I was previously doing before my anxiety kicked in. Sometimes this is not triggered by any conscious thought.

There are different classes of anxiety disorders: generalized anxiety disorders, phobic anxiety disorders, panic disorders, posttraumatic stress disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Once again we find that anxiety is inherited through genetics, but can also be triggered by obvious emotionally stressful events.

There are two main treatments for anxiety disorders, which include benzodiazepines, which is the most widely prescribed treatment, and serotonin agonists, which is also used to treat depression. This area of mental illness, as I would interpret it, is less severe than the other topics discussed. I can understand the side effects from mania, depression, and schizophrenia causing one to harm themselves as well as others, but with anxiety, I feel that it is easily treated and successfully so.

Mental illnesses can cause many problems for their host and their hosts family, many of which can successfully be treated and suppressed if medication is persistently used. Though some are embarrassing and cause debilitating problems, they can easily be treated and help to ensure an almost completely normal life.