What is the similarity of mental disorders to personal disorders?

Answer 1

If you have a mental disorder it can easily cause a physical disorder. For example, if you go into derpression, you may not eat as much and you easily shut everybody out. You may stay indoors and not get enough sunlight causing you to not get the vitmans your body needs.

Answer 2

"How are mental health and physical health related" is a very broad question, but I'll try to break it into sections.

Mental Illness & effects on physical health

Many people who are severely mentally ill are first more likely to be homeless, and second, are also prone to many preventable diseases. For example, every human being has a normal "flora" of bacteria and fungus on the skin; we wash and that keeps bacteria or fungus in check so it doesn't proliferate into a skin infection. But when a person is homeless, they don't have easy access to bathing facilities and so, they can more easily get skin infections. As well, when mentally ill or if using drugs or alcohol (as many mentally ill people do to control symptoms), they often feel indifferent or even combative about personal care so they don't bathe frequently even when hospitalized. As well, homeless / mentally ill persons often have no access to or simply don't use good handwashing practices. They may toilet outside and don't wash their hands after a bowel movement. Bowel contains E-Coli, a bacteria that can cause numerous GI symptoms, like diarrhea. Diarrhea spreads E-Coli faster among groups of homeless individuals. But, all this is just the start of a homeless, mentally ill person's health problems.

Most mentally ill or homeless and mentally ill cannot work and lack health insurance. If they have no residence, they are inelligible for State Medicaid health card. Therefore, they not only do not get the meds to treat their mental illness, they don't receive care for other health problems. In addition, some diseases make it hard to seek help, such as paranoid schizophrenia. Often, in these situation, the mentally ill or homeless and mentally ill only come to the attention of health care workers if the person is arrested (such as urinating in public), acts violently, or suffers an accident or injury (such as being hit by a car), or during seasonal outreach (such as during cold weather when agencies go looking for homeless persons before they freeze to death).

If mentally ill persons or homeless and mentally ill do get treatment, often their mental illness prevents them from understanding professional teaching, such as wound care for a diabetic... or how alcohol affects blood sugar.... When nurses can't teach before discharge because of mental illness barriers, they can only hope that the Universe takes care of the individual until the next crisis brings the person back to the hospital.

The above is only a very, very short description of *some* of the problems that mentally ill face and how it impacts their health. Textbooks and professional journals cannot even cover all aspects of how mental illness has detrimental physical health effects.

But let's turn to another side of how physical health affects mental health, using the example of an accident. It takes literally seconds for any accident to occur. A 20-year old drives too fast on a rainy road and wakes up a quadrapalegic. A 30-yr old father of 4 climbs a ladder to paint, slips, falls onto concrete, has an open fracture... gets a bone infection....and ends up an amputee. A mother turns her back for a second and little 9-yr old Johnny has a near-drowning, resulting in brain injury and physical disability.

In each incident of "an accident changed my health and my life," the person goes through a process of re-adjustment which *can* and often does include depression and other "mental health" reactions such as anger, despair, hopelessness, powerlessness, etc. Every person has to find a way through and out of those reactions in order to rebuild lives and begin to live again. But sometimes, they get stuck in depression -- or-- professionals prematurely assign a "mental illness" label to these very normal reactions. Some professionals try to avoid such labeling, instead opting to support the person emotionally as re-adjustment begins.

We can also include "the physically healthy" who must care for a chronically ill relative. Millions of people in the USA are now reaching their elderly years and an adult daughter (studies show the majority are women around age 50) steps in as caregiver. A previously healthy adult child can react to caring for an ill parent and develop a host of physical and emotional "illnessness" as a result of providing long-term caregiving actions.

Mental "health" versus "illness" and physical "health" versus "illness" is a complicated dance between taking care of oneself (even in "illness") and preventing illness from occurring or getting worse. Unfortunately, none of us are immune to facing an "illness" of either kind during our lifetimes. And, with the interplay of genes and hereditary conditions, even fewer of us can ever claim perfect mental and physical health at all times.

Answer 3

The ability to function effectively in, and blend with, the society one lives in.

Answer 4

Bipolar can be very similar to borderline personality disorder.

Answer 5

They can occur together.