What Is Mental Illness?..

First off I have to make a disclaimer that I am in no way a qualified mental health professional. I am simply just someone who suffers from mental illnesses myself and has a little knowledge about it. If anything I write about is inaccurate or I miss something important then please leave a comment.

Mental illness are like physical illnesses, they are on a continuum of severity ranging from mild to moderate to severe.  More than 16 million people have a mental illness in the UK and over 60 million in America.  Mental illness affects one in four adults and one in five children.

So, there are over 200 classified forms of mental illnesses obviously some are more common and others not many people have heard of. Some of the more common illnesses are;  clinical depression, bipolar disorder, dementia, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and since the 2016 movie ‘split’ dissociative identity disorder also known as multiple personality disorder.

I hate when people who don’t suffer from mental illnesses say that they find them “interesting” but then again I’m guilty of being obsessed with murder documentaries and isn’t that the same? murderers have some form of a mental illness, we all find things we don’t understand interesting. I myself find antisocial personality disorder to be interesting because I cant wrap my head around some of the traits like not feeling emotion and just projecting the emotions that they see other people feeling. Just because someone has antisocial personality traits doesn’t mean that they are a sociopath though, I have antisocial personality traits that come hand in hand with my borderline personality disorder but I’m not a sociopath, I still have empathy towards others and I feel emotions.

I could literally go on and on about antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders and how they are similar and how they are different but I think I should leave that for a whole other blog. Shane Dawson is currently doing a series on sociopaths that I think if your reading my blogs you would love, I am currently waiting for 8PM for episode 5! I will leave a link down below for anyone who is interested but I would definitely recommend.

Shane Dawson – The Mind Of Jake Paul E1

I really could carry on going in on each disorder but then I would be here for ages and this blog would be the length of a textbook… I think ill definitely go more in depth about different disorders to my understanding of them in other blogs because they are so complicated, nothing at all about mental health is straight forward, no two brains are the same, literally every single person on this earth is different and mental health disorders are the same. If there are over 200 classified forms of disorders and each disorder has a spectrum and the spectrums can cross over into other disorders spectrums, can you even begin to imagine how many different diagnosis’ there are?

Definitely think ill leave this blog as it is now, I can feel myself falling further and further into the rabbit hole that is mental health haha!

Love, Demi-Leigh x