Mental health is important, but it is something still overlooked because of it’s ubiquity. While it gives people a chance to relate to others, most people are often doing the exact opposite. Since most regular folk are dealing with their own personal health crises, it’s hard to help someone else in pain. The fact is that someone out there is likely struggling worse than you. While it takes some effort to offer advice, they could use your help. There are plenty of problems people have to deal with, and they all vary in degree and symptoms. Experiencing a mental problem is very common, but it does not mean you have an excuse to sit on your ass. You can help someone, but it certainly starts with helping yourself. Just be aware that you are not so much different than everyone else. These are the 10 most common mental health problems.
Most Common Mental Health Problems
1. Depression
While depression is not the most common feeling that people have, it is fairly common. It typically comes in the form of sadness, but mere sadness is not the point. Everyone has to deal with a depressing point in their life from time to time, but to call it depression is wrong. It does not mean that depression is not a real thing, and it does happen to affect a lot of people. Sadness is along the same lines and should not be ignored, because all negative feelings have some validity. It does not mean that it does not irk me when every single person you meet says they are depressed though.
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Most studies claim that upwards of 1 in every 5 people will face some sort of depression in their lifetime. While I think that this number is horribly exaggerated, it has validity regardless. The number of people truly struggling with a clinical depression is much lower at below 2 percent of the general population. Major depressive disorder is a severe psychologically depressive response to life experience. It can even be comorbid with other mental illnesses, as the other mental disorder can cause these symptoms. No matter how bad it is, the attention needs to given to someone struggling with this deep sadness.
2. Anxiety
You cannot go through a coffee shop or marijuana dispensary without someone mentioning their anxiety. While it is factual that few people truly struggle with an anxiety disorder, it does not mean others do not. Everyone and their mother will struggle with some sort of anxiety at least once in their lifetime. If not, then there may be something wrong, but everyone deals with mild anxiety from time to time. Since anxiety is considered an excessive worry or concern about one’s well-being, it’s no wonder. Nearly 2 percent of people live with some sort of severe anxiety, but the degrees do vary among people.
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This is what generally distinguishes it from worry or stress, even though these feelings do overlap. Anxiety is a stress reaction involving the fight or flight response kicking in, and it can often be because of upbringing. People can struggle with generalized anxiety or even panic attacks, which can be triggered by worry that a loved one is in danger, too. These things become a disorder when they reach a pathological level. If the worry is excessive, you may call it anxiety, but if it is not, you can simply call it worry or nervousness. It does not mean that fear plays any less of a part.
Most Common Mental Health Problems
3. Delusions and Paranoia
As we all know, delusional behavior is something you see of a lot these days, and it will not go away anytime soon. When people become deluded, they may act as such and decide to do things based on those thoughts. This is dangerous though, because a delusion is often not based in reality. If a person acts in response to something that is often important with a delusion, they can create problems.
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Paranoia is essentially the same thing, but paranoia can lead to delusions. Both of these feelings are a part of a thought pattern spectrum of thinking involved in schizophrenia and other delusional disorders. If you experience delusions, it is typically described as a psychotic thought disorder. Thought disorders involve longstanding patterns of thought disorganization and sit side by side with paranoid delusions. If you see someone going incongruently from one thought to the next or speaking word salad, you are witnessing it first hand.
4. Envy and Jealously
Envy or jealously are very common reactions and feelings involved in the wishful thinking of the mind. While it may be hard to describe these as mental health problems, they can certainly become a hindrance. If it’s a feeling that is fundamentally bad and worthy of avoiding, it’s a problem. Jealously does affect the mind quite a bit, so it deserves it’s spot on this list. This is because of how it can create other feelings that can lead to crimes of passion or even flat-out murder and rape.
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These feelings of envy can often be easily justified, but it does not justify literally leaving someone for dead. The problem with jealously is that it often leads to extreme outcomes. The feeling can be a severe problem or even symptom caused by having a mental disorder. Disorders like delusional disorder or even borderline personality disorder can be an indicator of this extreme. Since the extreme can lead to horrendous results, it’s an important enough feeling and reaction to warrant a spot on this list.
Most Common Mental Health Problems
5. Grief or Bereavement
Bereavement is essentially the same thing as grief, but bereavement is the more severe version. It typically involves the death of a loved one, while grief is more about a general feeling of loss. They are both bad and grief, generally speaking, describes bereavement well enough. The reason it is so common is because literally every single person on the face of the earth knows at least one other person. If you know someone, there’s always a chance that something bad can happen. In turn, it can lead to depression and deep feelings of loneliness and emptiness.
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Everyone knows someone who has died, and by the time they are a teenager, they know at least one person who has died. While it may sound depressing and hopeless, it is certainly a fact of reality. While the truth may suck, it does not mean that it has to control us. Bereavement is simply a stage one must go through in the process of grief. It generally ends with the person grieving recovering and moving on. Just know that the older you become, the more likely you will know of someone dead. This is not a classic case of good grief, as it is all about struggling to finally let go.
6. Post Traumatic Stress
While post-traumatic stress is considered an anxiety disorder, they are not exactly the same thing. The fear and stress involved in post traumatic stress disorder is certainly it’s own thing and deserves recognition. Typical every day anxiety is something that everyone deals with, but post-traumatic stress is a little less common. The severity of the stress in this disorder is caused by excessive fear and hypervigilance. The cause of this is typically because of something very bad happening to threaten a person’s life.
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It can even be excessive worry and anxiety that cause this PTSD, even when one’s life is not in danger. All it requires is a feeling so intense you feel as though you are going to die, which can happen to anyone. It’s important to note though, that not everyone who has a harrowing experience will develop these symptoms. If you know someone someone struggling, be sure to help give them the proper help. It can cause a lot of distress, and suicide rates are high among sufferers.
Most Common Mental Health Problems
7. Anger and Rage
Intermittent-explosive disorder and even thinks like borderline personality disorder and narcissism involve many emotions. One of the most prevalent emotions is anger or rage, and it is typically very intense. Since the anger is on a pathological level, it becomes hard to control or understand. The point is that even though there are plenty of so-called mental disorders with anger, it’s a universal feeling. Not everyone will have a rage attack or split hairs over the smallest thing, but it’s a very common feeling.
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It’s so common, in fact, that everyone feels it on a daily basis. It’s always good to be sure that you do not allow it to get the most of you. Irritation is the mild form of anger, and rage is the extreme form of anger. Those who struggle with anger problems do not always fly into a rage, but it can happen. If you struggle with a problem with rage, it is probably best if you seek help through therapy or anger management. The pathology of one’s mind dealing with anger or even personality disorder is complex. This is why it requires attention, even if someone does not want to deal with it.
8. Autism
While autism is seen more as a neurological “problem” to most people, it can be approached as a mental problem as well. In fact, I actually know more people who think that it is considered a mental disorder than a brain disorder. While it is somewhat shallow to call it a problem, it certainly has it’s downsides. While it is not a mental disorder, it is a disorder that affects the mind and the way a person thinks. Everyone seems to correlate autism with an attention deficit disorder, but they are not the same thing. Some of those struggling with autism can also have an attention deficit, but they are often seen interchangeably. It should also be noted that many famous scientists and engineers were in the autistic spectrum, including Asperger’s syndrome.
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The fact is that it is usually one or the other, and most people do not know any better. Because they have similar symptoms, you should understand that if both are present, one takes priority over the other. Autism is no joke, but like ADHD, it is highly over diagnosed as something severe or anything at all. The point being that just because you have some sort of focus problem does not mean you have autism. The big symptom with autism is the poor focus and repetitive behavior. A person with autism is more likely to look at your finger when you point that at the thing you pointed at. Their focus is more myopic, but it does not mean that it does not have it’s benefits.
Most Common Mental Health Problems
9. Obsessions and Compulsions
Having an obsessive personality disorder or simply having OCD can be a problem for those truly struggling. However, it should be stated that the overwhelming majority of people will never deal with this problem in the slightest. It does not mean that there are not plenty of people out there who have to deal with it. Most of those who struggle with obsessions do not have it as badly as having a disorder or a storybook case seen in a movie. Like PTSD or any other kind of anxiety, it is a disorder of fear and impulse.
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Your fight or flight is in constant disarray as you try to constantly mitigate the feeling. The best way to view this disorder is by seeing it as a sick addiction that someone cannot escape. Having to deal with constant brain fog and brain lock do not help either. If you happen to struggle with an obsessive disorder, you are less than 1 in 100. The degree of suffering and rumination varies from person to person, but the underlying problem is the same. While it is easy scoff at people who mention their OCD when organizing a folder, understand that nearly everyone has had a problem obsessing.
10. Attention Deficits
Out of all of the disorders on this list, I would have to classify attention deficit disorders as the most common. While this may only be a thing that a small community of people deal with, it is still significant. Many people deal with problems of focus and attention, and sometimes it will be ADD or ADHD. Typically the number of people is overblown to overprescribe medications, but it is still severe. Something that needs to stop is the correlation between attention deficit disorders and autism spectrum disorders. They both have symptoms of each other, but they are more often than not misdiagnosed and misunderstood.
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Enough people actually struggle enough with this, and it can certainly be bad. It’s more than reason enough to mention it here because of just how common it is. Nearly one in five people is said to have an attention deficit. Everyone has deficit problems every day, especially if they do not get enough sleep. The more stressed out you become, the more you are likely to skirt attention away by means of dissociation. It’s simply the way it works, and by daydreaming, you can avoid an unpleasant reality.
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