What Are the Different Types of Psychiatric Disorders?

Human psychological abnormalities are the same as human physical diseases. In order to conduct scientific research and summarize exchange experiences, it is necessary to classify and classify psychological anomalies and propose unified judgment standards ^[1] .

Classification of mental illness

In the past, the classification of mental illness was classified according to the severity, some according to the source of the problem, some according to the pathological basis, or completely according to the symptoms or phenomenology, and some based on the psychoanalytic view Defense mechanisms to classify, etc. The ideal classification mechanism is to divide according to different properties and different causes. However, the etiology and mechanism of most mental illnesses have not been fully understood, and there is also a lack of valuable laboratory or physical diagnosis. Therefore, the desire to classify mental illness completely according to its etiology is temporarily unfulfillable.

However, there are currently three basic mental classifications: the etiology method, the dimensional method, and the prototype method.

1. Taxonomy of Mental Illness

The etiology method is to establish classification and diagnosis based on the causes of various mental illnesses, especially biological pathological changes. For a group of diseases with the same pathological changes, they behave very similarly, such as the occurrence of "core" symptoms or "syndromes", and the methods of treatment and intervention are also roughly the same. Although this is a medical question-thinking method, it is also the most ideal classification.

However, because the etiology and mechanisms of most mental illnesses are unknown, only organic mental disorders can be classified completely according to this method. At present, the international classification of diseases and the classification and diagnosis standards of diseases in China are as far as possible according to this method, it is not possible to classify according to other methods, and follow the principle of etiology and grade diagnosis. The principle of grade diagnosis is: differentiate the diagnosis grade according to the symptom grade and the ladder; the grade is arranged as brain organic, psychotic, affective disorder, neurosis-like syndrome; coexistence of severity, only diagnosis of severe, not simultaneous diagnosis; In the relationship between sex and functionality, priority is given to the diagnosis of organic nature. This diagnostic classification principle is long-term follow-up with high accuracy and consistency.

Although distinguished by cause, there are of course some diseases and disorders that may overlap or occur one after the other. Then according to the principle of graded diagnosis "allowed to appear, do not violate the classification principle", can be diagnosed side by side: multiple substance dependence, functional dysfunction first followed by drug dependence, personality disorder and mental retardation occur later Mental disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hyperactivity disorder and extensive developmental disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, panic attack and plague horror, schizophrenia and affective disorder, a kind of functional psychosis and an organic spirit obstacle. A variety of physical and sexual disorders related to psychological factors.

2. Classification of mental illness 2. Dimensional approach

Because most mental disorders have different causes, and many symptoms are not diagnostic specific, such as depression can often appear in almost any kind of problem and disorder. Symptoms may also be caused by continuous development, modification and shaping. Changes have occurred, and some scholars believe that many symptoms and manifestations can actually be regarded as a type in a continuous lineage, such as depression and mania, which are the two extremes of emotional disorders. Therefore, some scholars have proposed that patients' cognition, emotions and behaviors can be recorded and then quantified with a certain scale. For example, at 1-10 degrees, the patient has severe anxiety (9), moderate depression (6), and mild mania (2), so that you can get a distribution map of emotional conditions, and then based on all The syndrome is divided into categories of mental disorders, this is the dimensional method. Therefore, the dimensional method distinguishes various mental disorders by symptoms and syndromes. The United States' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), especially the third edition (DSM-III) and the third revised edition (DSM-III-R), are based on this classification principle.

The characteristics of this taxonomy are:

1. Symptomatic diagnosis. When all problems with the same symptoms are clustered, focusing only on the performance and the severity of the performance is a diagnosis named after the symptoms.

2. Stateful diagnosis. Since this classification is based on symptomology and syndrome, ignoring the essence of the problem, once the symptoms change, the diagnosis should also change, such as: acute stress response-transient psychotic disorder- -Schizophrenia-schizophrenia-post-schizophrenia depression.

3. Cross-section diagnosis. Because the same person may have different symptoms and syndromes at different times in the same disorder and disease, he will get multiple different, temporary diagnoses.

4. Overlapping diagnosis. Due to the severity and complexity of diseases and disorders, a certain disorder and disease may have multiple symptoms and syndromes. Then, he may have a diagnosis of multiple diseases, that is, a common disease problem.

5. Therapeutic diagnosis. At present, the therapeutic intervention can only be symptomatic. This classification method is beneficial to the choice of treatment options, especially biological methods such as drugs.

3. Classification of mental illness 3. Prototype

When we classify a certain type of object or behavior, it is neither necessary nor necessary to describe all its characteristics before classifying it. What we do is to extract the characteristic and iconic characteristics of it and compare it with some items or behaviors. Similarly, when we analyze and compare mental illness, we will also analyze and compare the case with the category that we have clearly assigned, that is, compare the examples, and add some additional criteria to further distinguish. When this method is used for the classification of psychological disorders, the various possible characteristics and properties of the disorder are listed, and other candidate characteristics must match them fairly well before they can be used for classification. Today's diagnostic standards have adopted this approach to a large extent. Symptom criteria, course criteria, severity criteria, and exclusion criteria are proposed in the diagnostic criteria. The advantage of this classification is that it is simple and clear, we can combine the current level of knowledge with psychology, and it is quite convenient to use. Of course, this method also has certain problems, mainly because the delimitation is not very clear, and often there are some symptoms that are used for various disorders, etc. ^[1]