Demystifying Psychiatry for the Church – Part 3

The faces of mental illness

What do you see in your community?

Mental illness can take many forms. Depression is not just the person curled up in a fetal position on the floor of a darkened room sobbing. It can also look like not having energy to perform daily tasks, feeling sad, empty, or irritable for unknown reasons, or the loss of interest and pleasure in activities once enjoyed.

PTSD, caused by trauma, is another common cause of mental illness. We mostly associate PTSD with veterans of war but any form of trauma can cause PTSD. Nightmares are often a symptom of PTSD causing someone to be too scared to go to sleep. Freezing up when something triggers a memory to surface is another symptom of PTSD.

Anxiety takes many forms from situational to social. Distressing or fearful emotions with an unrecognized cause can manifest as irritability and fatigue or as physiologically symptoms like racing heart and tunnel vision.

Some mood disorders such as bipolar illness, which was formerly known as manic-depressive disorder, are often viewed view “kiss of death” meaning no hope of living a normal life. This is far from the truth. It is true that the sooner a person with bipolar illness is identified and treated, the better the long-term outcome. With proper medication and therapy, normal life is possible.

Schizophrenia, which has been often referred to as multiple personality disorder, is a biochemical illness that presents with hallucinations and delusions.

All these diagnosis require a collaborative approach of medication management along with therapy to address the neurochemical imbalance as well as the emotional and psychological impact.