mental disorder

How Better Definitions Of Mental Disorders Could Aid Diagnosis And Treatment

Mental disorders are currently defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which includes hundreds of distinct diagnostic categories, but a new study we worked on suggests we could do better. Each category in the DSM has a checklist of criteria. If you meet “enough” (often, just over half) of these criteria, [...]

Scientists Confirm Genetics Of Schizophrenia

Shutterstock Images Creating an effective treatment for schizophrenia requires a better understanding of its biology, of the genes that cause it. Using technology to illuminate chromosomes, scientists confirmed the underlying genetics of this mental disorder. The identified genetic disruptions occur at a crucial time in brain development. The science team hopes its research, [...]

Physical Health Neglected In Mentally Ill Young People

Pixabay Images It took two-and-a-half years of intense joint pain for Maddison O'Gradey Lee for doctors to take the teenager's concerns seriously. The pain was "agony", Ms O'Gradey Lee, 18, said. Her doctors said it was a byproduct of her anxiety disorder. "One doctor actually said, 'It's all in your head'," she said. Convinced she had fabricated her affliction, [...]

Only Fundamental Social Change Can Defeat The Anxiety Epidemic

Natasha Devon, sacked last week as a mental health champion for young people. Photograph: Ken McKay/Rex We live with an epidemic of anxiety. In 1980, 4% of Americans suffered a mental disorder associated with anxiety. Today half do. The trends in Britain are similar. A third of Britons will experience anxiety disorder at some [...]

Depression Is More Than A Mental Disorder—It Affects The Whole Body

Photo: colourbox An international team of researchers lead by the University of Granada (UGR) has scientifically proven for the first time that depression is more than a mental disorder—it causes important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease, since it affects the whole organism. The results of [...]

Why Is Impulsive Aggression In Children So Difficult To Treat?

iStock Photo Maladaptive and impulsive aggression is explosive, triggered by routine environmental cues, and intended to harm another person, making it a significant challenge for clinicians, family members, and others who interact with affected children and adolescents. Efforts to develop effective treatments would benefit from better descriptive and quantitative methods to characterize this [...]

A Huge Genetic Discovery On Schizophrenia

Photo: Tim Beddow/Getty Images Schizophrenia is a devastating and often destructive mental disorder, one that overtakes a young mind and sends it spinning out of touch with reality. About one in 100 Americans is estimated to have schizophrenia, and although the word itself has been around for just over 100 years, the illness has [...]

Up to 1 in 5 children suffer from a mental disorder, CDC says

Up to 20 percent of children in the United States suffer from a mental disorder, and the number of kids diagnosed with one has been rising for more than a decade, according to a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In the agency's first-ever study of mental disorders [...]

Can kids develop internet-use disorder?

In recognition of threats posed by increasingly prevalent electronic devices, the bible for the psychiatric profession, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), will include internet-use disorder as a condition ''recommended for further study'' in its revised edition, the DSM-V, which will be issued in May. The inclusion classifies internet-use disorder alongside other [...]

Go to Top