Psychological Disorders: Types and Examples

Psychological disorders, also known as mental disorders or psychiatric disorders, are characterized by patterns of behavioral or psychological symptoms that impact multiple areas of life and cause distress for the person experiencing them. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) lists hundreds of distinct conditions, providing standardized diagnostic criteria but not guidelines for treatment or predictions related to the illness course.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Neurodevelopmental disorders typically occur during infancy, childhood, or adolescence and include:

• Intellectual Development Disorder: Impairments in intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviors diagnosed before age 18.
• Global Developmental Delay: Developmental disabilities in children under five, relating to cognition, social functioning, speech, language, and motor skills. Frequently seen as a temporary diagnosis before standardized IQ tests can be taken.
• Communication Disorders: Difficulties using, understanding, or detecting language and speech, encompassing language disorder, speech sound disorder, childhood-onset fluency disorder (stuttering), and social (pragmatic) communication disorder.
• Autism Spectrum Disorder: Persistent deficits in social interaction and communication, as well as restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, present during the early developmental period and causing significant impairment in everyday functioning.
• Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A persistent pattern of hyperactivity and impulsivity and/or inattention that interferes with functioning in multiple settings and must have several symptoms present before age 12.

Bipolar and Related Disorders

Bipolar disorder involves mood shifts, activity levels, and energy, often between elevated (mania or hypomania) and depressed moods. Symptoms must be present during the early developmental period and significantly impact social, occupational, or academic functioning.

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive and persistent fear, worry, anxiety, and related behavioral disturbances. Types include:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Excessive worry about everyday events, interfering with well-being and functioning.
• Social Anxiety Disorder: Irrational fear of being watched, judged, embarrassed, or humiliated, significantly impacting an individual's life.
• Specific Phobias: Extreme fear of a specific object or situation, such as spiders, heights, or snakes.
• Panic Disorder: Panic attacks that may seem to strike out of the blue, causing anxiety and preoccupation over the possibility of another attack, leading to avoidance behaviors.
• Separation Anxiety Disorder: Excessive fear or anxiety related to being separated from attachment figures, affecting a person's ability to move away from home, attend school, or get married.

Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders

Previously grouped with anxiety disorders, trauma- and stressor-related disorders involve exposure to a stressful or traumatic event. Types include:

• Acute Stress Disorder: Severe anxiety for up to one month after exposure to a traumatic event, with symptoms such as dissociative experiences, reduced emotional responsiveness, distressing memories, and difficulty experiencing positive emotions.
• Adjustment Disorders: A response to a sudden change or loss, characterized by symptoms like anxiety, irritability, depressed mood, worry, anger, hopelessness, and feelings of isolation.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Can develop after exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, with symptoms including reliving the event, avoiding reminders of it, feeling on edge, and having negative thoughts. Nightmares, flashbacks, and difficulty concentrating are also common.
• Reactive Attachment Disorder: Results from a lack of healthy relationships and attachments with adult caregivers during the first few years of childhood, leading to symptoms like withdrawal from adult caregivers and social and emotional disturbances.

Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative disorders involve a dissociation or interruption in aspects of consciousness, including identity and memory. Types include:

• Dissociative Amnesia: Temporary loss of memory as a result of dissociation, ranging from brief periods to many years, often stemming from psychological trauma.
• Dissociative Identity Disorder: Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, it involves the presence of two or more different identities or personalities in one person, each with its way of perceiving and interacting with the environment, leading to changes in behavior, memory, perception, emotional response, and consciousness.
• Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder: A sense of being outside of one's own body (depersonalization) and disconnected from reality (derealization), often accompanied by a sense of unreality and involuntary disconnect from memories, feelings, and consciousness.

Somatic Symptom Disorders

Previously known as somatoform disorders, somatic symptom disorders involve prominent physical symptoms without a diagnosable physical cause. The focus is on the unusual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with the symptoms rather than the physical symptoms themselves. Types include:

• Somatic Symptom Disorder: Preoccupation with physical symptoms that make it difficult to function, leading to emotional distress and difficulty coping with daily life.
• Illness Anxiety Disorder: Excessive concern about having an undiagnosed medical condition, with excessive worry about body functions and sensations, preoccupation with the possibility of serious illness, and changes in behavior such as seeking medical testing/treatments and avoiding health risks.
• Conversion Disorder: Motor or sensory symptoms lacking a compatible neurological or medical explanation, often developing after a real physical injury or stressful event, resulting in a psychological and emotional response.
• Factitious Disorder: Intentionally creating, faking, or exaggerating symptoms of illness, including Munchausen syndrome, in which individuals feign an illness to attract attention.

Feeding and Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are characterized by obsessive concerns with weight and disruptive eating patterns that negatively impact physical and mental health. Types include:

• Anorexia Nervosa: Restricted food consumption leading to weight loss, preoccupation with weight gain, distorted view of appearance and behavior, and fear of gaining weight.
• Bulimia Nervosa: Binge eating followed by extreme steps to compensate, such as self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives or diuretics, or excessive exercise.
• Rumination Disorder: Regurgitating previously chewed or swallowed food to either spit it out or re-swallow it, occurring in infants, children, teens, and adults, and potentially leading to dental decay, esophageal ulcers, and malnutrition.
• Pica: Craving and consuming non-food substances like dirt, paint, or soap, more common among young children than adults, and sometimes triggered by a lack of nutrients.
• Binge Eating Disorder: Episodes of binge eating where an unusually large amount of food is consumed in a short period, often accompanied by feelings of loss of control and emotional distress.

Sleep-Wake Disorders

Sleep disorders involve interruptions in sleep patterns that lead to distress and affect daytime functioning. Types include:

• Narcolepsy: Irrepressible need to sleep, often accompanied by cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle tone), hypnagogic hallucinations (as someone falls asleep), and hypnopompic hallucinations (as someone wakes up).
• Insomnia Disorder: Inability to get enough sleep to feel rested, with significant distress or impairment over time.
• Hypersomnolence Disorder: Excessive sleepiness despite an adequate main sleep period, leading to falling asleep during the day at inappropriate times.
• Breathing-Related Sleep Disorders: Breathing abnormalities during sleep, such as sleep apnea, causing brief interruptions in sleep and leading to insomnia and daytime sleepiness.
• Parasomnias: Sleep disorders featuring unusual behaviors, including sleepwalking, sleep terrors, sleep talking, and sleep eating.
• Restless Legs Syndrome: Uncomfortable sensations in the legs and an irresistible urge to move them to relieve the sensations, interfering with sleep.

Disruptive, Impulse Control, and Conduct Disorders

These disorders involve an inability to control emotions and behaviors, resulting in harm to oneself or others. Types include:

• Kleptomania: Inability to control the impulse to steal, often involving stealing items that have no real monetary value, with escalating tension prior to the theft and relief and gratification afterward.
• Pyromania: A fascination with fire that results in acts of fire-starting that endanger the self and others, with deliberate and purposeful setting of fires more than once and experiencing tension and emotional arousal before setting a fire.
• Intermittent Explosive Disorder: Brief outbursts of anger and violence that are out of proportion to the situation, with individuals erupting into angry outbursts or violent actions in response to everyday annoyances or disappointments.
• Conduct Disorder: Violation of social norms and the rights of others, including aggression toward people and animals, property destruction, theft and deception, and violation of rules and laws, resulting in significant problems in a child's academic or social functioning.
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder: Defiance, irritability, anger, aggression, and vindictiveness, with children refusing to comply with adult requests almost all the time and engaging in behaviors to deliberately annoy others.

Depressive Disorders

Depressive disorders are characterized by sad, empty, or irritable moods accompanied by physical and cognitive symptoms. Types include:

• Major Depressive Disorder: Persistent sad, empty, or irritable mood and loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable, along with changes in sleep, appetite, energy, concentration, and self-worth.
• Persistent Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia): A chronic, low-grade form of depression that lasts for at least two years and interferes with daily functioning.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Depression that occurs during the winter months and improves during the spring and summer.
• Bipolar Depression: Depressive episodes that alternate with manic or hypomanic episodes.
• Postpartum Depression: Depression that occurs within the first few weeks or months after giving birth.
• Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD): Depression, anxiety, irritability, and other