Mental health

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ...

• Two of the most common mental health problems are anxiety and depression.
• Hypochondria, eating disorders, and hyperactivity are also included in this group of disorders.
• They affect developed countries and also the third world. Currently, the socioeconomic crisis has triggered cases of mental illness.

Not only in developed societies

Although mental health problems have always been associated with more developed societies, these types of diseases also exist in the third world. In these low-income countries, there is a severe shortage of human and financial resources in mental health services.

On the other hand, in today's society they are highly stigmatized and their ignorance can lead to isolation and social rejection of the people who suffer from it. In many cases, these disorders with correct treatment allow patients to lead a normal life.

Main diseases

• • Anxiety / Generalized Anxiety Disorder: It is one of the most common mental health problems. Anxiety itself is a normal emotional response, but when it is too intense, uncontrollable and interferes with daily life, it is necessary to seek treatment. Stress is closely linked to anxiety.

    In generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), it is persistent over time (more than six months) and generalized, without being restricted to a specific situation.

    Anxiety causes significant discomfort or deterioration in family, social, work relationships or other important areas of the person's activity.

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): OCD is a disorder that is included within anxiety disorders and is characterized by obsessions (ideas, recurring and persistent thoughts) and compulsions (repetitive behaviors that follow certain stereotyped rituals), generating strange behaviors .
• Depression: is a common mental disorder, characterized by the presence of sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or lack of self-esteem, sleep or appetite disorders, feelings of fatigue and lack of concentration. These feelings of sadness make the patient unable to lead a normal life.

Depression can become chronic or recurrent, and hinder any usual activities of daily life. In its most serious form, it can lead to suicide. The mild form of depressive disorder is known as dysthymia.

• It is a psychiatric illness in which the patient loses contact with reality, causing reality to be mixed with fiction, and unwanted and even dangerous behaviors can be generated. It is a chronic mental illness that can generate great social isolation.
• Bipolar disorder: it is a mental illness that occurs in the form of episodes, in which it goes from periods where the patient presents a state of great sadness and apathy (depressive episode) to states of great euphoria (manic episode).
• Phobic disorders: they are characterized by an irrational fear of a stimulus that makes it impossible to face it, affecting the quality of life. Some of the most common are claustrophobia and agoraphobia.
• Hypochondria: characterized by excessive concern and, in most cases many times, unjustified for health, which leads the patient to be continuously alert and can even lead to the symptoms of those diseases that he thinks he suffers.

In children and adolescents, the most common psychiatric illnesses include:

• anorexia and bulimia are the most common eating disorders. In anorexia there is an obsession not to gain weight, which is why behaviors aimed at losing excess weight and not wanting to eat food develop. On the contrary, in bulimia the patient feels a compulsion to eat but, at the same time, remorse, which leads him to vomit or spend long periods without eating any food.
• Hyperactivity: it is a disorder that is characterized by an inappropriate development of the level of attention, hyperactivity-impulsivity that produces a significant deterioration in two or more areas / aspects of life. It appears mainly in children at an early age and affects their learning, behavior and social interaction. This problem can become chronic and remain in the adult stage.

CRISIS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Unfavorable socioeconomic conditions have detrimental consequences on health, something that is especially notable in mental health. In the current scenario, losing a job, lack of perspective or job uncertainty, associated with economic problems and family dynamics, have clearly been associated with an increase in mental health problems as well as an increase in mortality from suicide.

However, it must be taken into account that the effect of economic crises on mental health will depend a lot on the socio-health context, that is, if there are health resources and mechanisms that maintain the welfare state and the protection of the citizen, its impact will be less .

When stress related to unfavorable socioeconomic circumstances is long-lasting, its impact on mental health is greater. Especially vulnerable groups in this sense are the child population, the elderly, immigrants and low-skilled workers or those in precarious working conditions. Also, although the economic crisis affects both men and women, the effects are greater on them because, prior to the crisis, women already started from a situation of greater labor difficulty (worse wages, greater difficulty in accessing a quality employment, more precarious jobs to which is added the burden of domestic and household work due to lack of work-life balance).