1. Mood Disorders: Depression and Bi-polar Disorder
Depression is persistent feelings of hopelessness, sadness, an inability to concentrate, disturbance of sleep patterns and one's general attitude about himself. It affects an individual's mood, body, thoughts and eating patterns. Depression is more than being in a blue mood. Depression can lasts for weeks, months, even years. Depression affects nearly 10 percent of Americans each year. Women are twice as likely to get depression as men. This can be contributed to hormonal changes due to pregnancy, menstruation, menopause or puberty. Although men have a lesser chance of being depressed, they are less likely to be diagnosed or to get help. Older adults are also likely to have depression. As the elderly lose loved ones to death, develop health and medical issues and are not able to be as active as they once were, depression can be the result.
Bi-polar disorder is characterized by extreme swings of mood or behavior. An individual diagnosed with this disorder can be irritable, display poor judgment, have increased feelings of invulnerability, bouts of increased energy, have racing thoughts, depressive thoughts or fatigue. Individuals with bi-polar disorder can have manic episodes that swing from elation to depression in a relatively short span of time.
2. Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a disease that results with the continued use of alcohol despite its negative consequences in a person's life. Nearly 14 million Americans, which is 1 in 13 adults are alcoholics. Alcoholism can increase the risk of certain types of cancers, create car crashes, harm an unborn fetus or increase the likelihood of suicide or homicide. Alcoholism related incidents cost our economy an estimated $100 billion per year.
3. Anxiety Disorders
Most people experience anxiety before a big event such as an exam, a wedding, or a work presentation. Anxiety that persistently fills an individual's life with fear to the extent that he can not function in a daily routine, is preoccupied by his fears and those fears grow progressively worse suffers from an anxiety disorder. Approximately 4 million Americans have a generalized anxiety disorder throughout any given year. There are several types of anxiety disorders: panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder.
4. Eating Disorders
The main types of eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia. Individuals diagnosed with anorexia see themselves as overweight and monitor their weight and food consumption obsessively. Intense exercising and purging any food consumed is the manner in which these individuals control their weight. Bulimia is binge eating and then purging. Another type of eating disorder is binge eating. This disorder is not an official diagnosis of the American Psychiatric Association. Binge eating is eating uncontrollably. The difference between binge eating and bulimia is in binge eating the individual is not purging the food. Most individuals with binge eating disorders are overweight. All of these eating disorders induce feelings of shame and disgust within the individuals for their eating habits.
5. Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease
Dementia is the loss of mental abilities due to the loss of brain cells. Signs of dementia are memory loss, loss of language skills, disorientation, judgment impairment and general personality changes.
Alzheimer's disease is progressive brain disorder. A loss of memory, language skills and an understanding of space and time characterize the disease. Individuals are not able to recall memories of certain events or people, nor are they able to create new memories. Family, friends and daily care takers observe painfully the loss of the individual they once knew to this devastating disease.
