Psychiatric illness, often referred to as mental illness, encompasses a wide range of conditions that affect an individual’s thoughts, emotions, behavior, and overall mental well-being. These conditions can manifest in various ways and have a significant impact on daily life.
1. What is a mental illness?
Mental illness is due to the disorder of human brain function, which leads to abnormalities in perception, thinking, emotion and behavior of patients. There are many types of common mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and mental disorders caused by epilepsy. Different types of psychosis have different clinical manifestations, and the treatment methods are also different.
Mental illnesses mostly occur in young adults. Some have intermittent attacks, some continue to progress, and gradually become chronic. They have high recurrence and disability rates. If they are not actively treated, mental decline and personality changes may occur, and they cannot adapt. social life, it is difficult to fulfill the responsibilities to the family and society. However, if it is detected early and treated in time, the patient can also recover completely and live, study and work normally.
2. How to identify mental patients early?
Early detection is a critical moment that determines the success or failure of treatment for mental patients. The following points are likely to be early manifestations of mental illness.
Personality change: Loss of consistent and stable personality traits, such as those who used to be gentle and docile become grumpy and irritable;
Changes in interpersonal communication: such as becoming withdrawn, alienated from others, traveling alone, not looking around at people around, avoiding eyes, sensitive and suspicious, some uncharacteristically, become more enthusiastic, proactive and hospitable, and hit it off at first sight.
Attention and memory impairment: manifested as distracted attention, absent-mindedness or difficulty in arousing attention, memory loss, and forgetfulness in doing things.
Work and study ability decline, work efficiency decreases, frequent accidents occur, and academic performance declines.
Emotional changes: become cold, lack of family affection, anxiety, depression, frown or high mood, elation.
Abnormal behavior: laziness, wandering aimlessly, laughing at oneself, talking in a low voice, staring at one side for a long time, listening sideways, staring blankly, wearing strange clothes, repeating certain actions many times.
3. Can mental illness be cured?
Many people believe that mental illness is incurable and can only be temporarily controlled with drugs. This is a prejudice against psychiatric treatment.
In fact, mental illness can be cured if it is treated in time and correctly. Experience shows that if schizophrenia can be treated correctly within six months of onset, most can be cured. If it exceeds six months, the chance of cure is greatly reduced.
Due to social prejudice and misunderstanding by family members, mental illness was considered as an “ideological problem” in the early stage, so a lot of time was wasted on ideological work. Even if very abnormal phenomena are discovered, the family members are unwilling to send the patient to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. If you go to a psychiatric hospital to see a doctor, the patient’s study, work, love, and marriage prospects are all over. Therefore, I would rather engage in superstition in secret, or use folk remedies for treatment. Many patients have reached the point of being out of control and had to be sent to psychiatric hospitals, thus losing the best opportunity for treatment.
4. Things to note when mentally ill patients are discharged from hospital
Adhere to medication consolidation treatment: Adherence to medication and consolidation of treatment is the key to preventing relapse of mental illness. When patients are discharged from the hospital, they should understand the nature of the disease and the importance of maintenance treatment, recognize the early symptoms of psychotic relapse, and understand some specific measures to prevent relapse. It is a wrong understanding to stop the drug for the patient when the condition improves slightly. Stopping the drug casually may easily lead to the recurrence of the disease.
Regular review: After the patient is discharged from the hospital, the family should bring the patient to the hospital for regular review so that the doctor can promptly understand the patient’s medication status, degree of recovery and mental state, adjust the medication and dose in a timely manner, guide the patient’s daily life, and detect fluctuations in the condition in a timely manner. Early signs can be detected and corresponding measures can be taken to avoid re-hospitalization due to recurrence, which not only reduces the patient’s pain but also relieves the patient’s unnecessary financial burden.
5. Can mentally ill people get married and have children?
The Marriage Law only stipulates that the mentally ill cannot marry and have children during the onset period, and there are no hard and fast rules for marriage and childbearing in other states. The basis for judging that the patient is not in the onset period is the “clinical recovery” certificate issued by a psychiatrist.
Marriage can enable patients to enjoy a regular family life, get more care, reduce inferiority complex, and have the opportunity to communicate more with the outside world. More importantly, if the patient can strictly follow the doctor’s advice and take medication under the company and supervision of his spouse, the risk of disease recurrence will be greatly reduced – this is beneficial; marriage is bound to be accompanied by family conflicts. If there is a “civil war” after marriage, “Continuously, it is bound to bring more stimulation to the patient, which is not conducive to the recovery of the disease-this is a disadvantage. Therefore, mentally ill patients must weigh the pros and cons when considering marriage issues.
As for fertility issues, although the law does not explicitly prohibit mentally ill people from having children, doctors’ advice is that childbirth should be avoided as much as possible. Mental illness has a clear hereditary tendency. According to surveys, if both parents suffer from mental illness, the risk of their children suffering from mental illness is about 50%.
If a single parent suffers from mental illness, the child’s prevalence rate is about 15%. Moreover, the process of pregnancy and childbirth will have a huge impact on the patient’s psychology and physiology, and it is not advisable to take any drugs during pregnancy and lactation. Once antipsychotic drugs are stopped, the condition may relapse. To sum up, mentally ill patients should be cautious in marriage and try to avoid childbearing.
Conclusion:
Psychiatric illness encompasses a diverse array of conditions that impact mental health. By raising awareness, seeking help when needed, and fostering a supportive environment, individuals can work toward managing their conditions, achieving recovery, and leading fulfilling lives.
