Understanding Mental Illnesses:

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Obsessive compulsive disorder OCD:

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder. It causes obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals and behaviours. These can be time-consuming, distressing and interfering in your day-to-day life.

Symptoms of OCD include:

Obsessive thoughts,
Compulsions,
Contamination fears,
Checking (checking something repeativly),
Hoarding,
And more.

Bipolar Disorder:

Bipolar disorder, also known as bipolar affective disorder, is a mood disorder. It causes your mood to swing from an extreme high to an extreme low. Symptoms can be severe. They affect areas of your life, such as work, school and relationships.

Symptoms of Bipolar disorder include:

Mania,
Hypomania,
Depression,
Psychosis,
And more.

Do also remember there are numerous types of bipolar disorder such as: Bipolar I, Bipolar II, Cyclothymia and more.

Eating Disorders:

An eating disorder is a mental illness where people use food to try to manage their feelings. There's many different types such as: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder and more. All surrounding a severe difficulty with food and their body.

Symptoms of eating disorders are:

Worrying about your weight and body shape,
eating very little/ too much food,
deliberately making yourself sick or taking laxatives after you eat,
exercising too much,
having very strict habits or routines around food,
changes in your mood.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD:

People develop post-traumatic stress disorder after experiencing, or seeing, something that is traumatic. The symptoms of PTSD can start immediately or after a delay of weeks or months. This can develop into a personality change.

Symptoms of PTSD are:

Dissociation,
Reliving the experience through flashbacks, dreams or nightmares,
Emotional dysregulation,
Negative self-perception,
Hypervigilance and hyperarousal,
And much more.

Schizophrenia:

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects the way we think. There are different types of schizophrenia and people can have ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ symptoms of schizophrenia. The symptoms may affect how you cope with day to day life.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia are:

Hallucinations,
Delusions,
Disorganised thinking,
lack of motivation,
slow movement,
change in sleep patterns,
poor grooming or hygiene,
changes in body language and emotions,
less interest in social activities,
low sex drive,
And many more.

Borderline personality disorder BPD/EUPD:

BPD is an illness that makes you struggle with your emotions and this can affect your relationships with other people. Everyone will experience BPD differently and usually is caused by childhood trauma.

Symptoms of BPD are:

Extreme reactions to feeling abandoned,
Unstable relationships with others,
Confused feelings about who you are,
Being impulsive,
Regular self-harming, suicidal threats or behaviour,
Long lasting feelings of emptiness or being abandoned,
And many more.

Dissociation and dissociative identity disorder DID:

Dissociative disorders are a mental illness that affects the way you think. They experience symptoms such as not feeling connected to your own body, or developing different identity.

Symptoms of DID are:

Amnesia - This means memory loss.
Depersonalisation - Feeling disconnected from your own body.
Derealisation - Feeling disconnected from the world around you.
Identity confusion,
Identity alteration,
Loss of feelings,
Losing control of your body movements.

Schizoaffective disorder:

Schizoaffective disorder is a mental illness that can affect your thoughts, mood and behaviour. It causes psychosis with mania and depression. There are different types of schizoaffective disorder; being a manic type, a depressive type or a mixed type.

Symptoms include:

Hallucinations,
Delusions,
Disorganised speech,
Disorganised behaviour,
Catatonic behaviour,
And many more.

Personality disorders:

A personality disorder can affect how you cope with life, manage relationships, how you behave, and how you feel.

We already have mentioned bpd, however there are various others within clusters A, B and C.

Cluster A personality disorders are characterized by odd, eccentric thinking or behavior. They include paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder.

Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behavior. They include antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

Cluster C personality disorders are characterized by anxious, fearful thinking or behavior. They include avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

This only touches the surface of mental illnesses. If you want to learn more about them, plenty of beautiful people on twitter open up about their life dealing with these illnesses and can teach us all more about them.

Don't be afraid to reach out and learn more

If you suffer with any of the following conditions and want further support, please reach out to mental health charities.

If you want to learn more about these illnesses, please check out the following:

@Rethink_
@MindCharity
@PAPYRUS_tweets
@mentalhealth
@YoungMindsUK