You don’t know how anxious people with real anxiety disorders are

Recently, I have frequently heard people around me say things like this: "I am a man, very cute."

Or, "Ignore him, he is insane and schizophrenic."

I feel uncomfortable listening to it.

The words "forced" and "dissociated" originally came from descriptions of mental illness. In fact, real mental illness is not as simple as everyone says.

Today I decided to do some popular science (with a serious face) to see what typical misunderstandings you have about mental illness. 3354When a mental illness is overly misunderstood, it is a disaster for people with real mental illness.

First let’s talk about obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia that you often hear:

1. Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Typical misunderstanding: I usually Quite compulsive. It must be obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was once ridiculed, and it was always fun to joke about it.

“I often chew my nails very short, otherwise I won’t be happy; I won’t be happy if I don’t clean up the memory of my phone. If my desk is untidy, I won’t be happy. I can’t stand my corner of the page. "I must be OCD" is like a fun introduction to yourself that adds a bit of personality and is impressive.

So, when a real obsessive-compulsive disorder patient talks to someone, the answer he gets may be "I have had obsessive-compulsive disorder since I was a child, haha, what a coincidence, you also have obsessive-compulsive disorder?" Don't worry about this kind of thing . "

At this time, the obsessive-compulsive disorder patient must be heartbroken. Because this kind of "obsessive-compulsive disorder" that is ridiculed and treated as a joke is completely different from the "obsessive-compulsive disorder" that tortures him to death.

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Talking about obsessive-compulsive disorder in a light tone is itself a misunderstanding.

What is obsessive-compulsive disorder?

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In , obsessive-compulsive disorder and related disorders are divided into individual units, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, hoarding disorder, trichotillomania, skinscratch disorder, etc.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a unit. It is a chronic and refractory disease. Its main symptoms are obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior, so the patient is very painful but cannot get rid of it. This is completely different from the small "obsessive thinking" and "compulsive behavior" mentioned in the joke.

Most people may have had some mild obsessive thoughts or behaviors, such as constantly thinking about the interview or appointment the next day without thinking about it for the time being, or closing the doors and windows and checking them repeatedly during obsessive-compulsive disorder. Among patients, such thoughts or behaviors will be more persistent, distressing, obviously unreasonable, and will significantly interfere with daily activities (Qian, 2006).

They will cause patients great pain. Moreover, patients will waste a lot of time on them, at least an hour a day. Not only that, they will also greatly hinder the patient's normal life and work, making it impossible for the patient to maintain normal interpersonal relationships.

Here are two examples to illustrate what obsessive-compulsive disorder is really like.

Examples of obsessive thinking:

I always have some "terrible" thoughts when I think about men. My friend, I want him to die; when my mom goes down the stairs, I want her to roll down and break her neck; when my sister says she's taking her kids to the beach, I want them all to drown.

These thoughts are driving me crazy: why would I want something so terrible to happen to them? It makes me savage and feel like a lunatic who despises society. Maybe I die. Better than "cursing" the person I love (Qian, 2006)

Example of compulsive behavior:

28-year-old married woman, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of getting dirty. Afraid of injury. She was afraid that the water she poured would splash back into the basin, so she had to pick up the water and pour it over again.

She also had symptoms such as washing hands, checking, and counting repeatedly, even though she knew it was not necessary. , even if she didn't want to, she just couldn't help it.

Later, her symptoms gradually worsened, and she didn't even dare to touch her socks.

In winter, when the temperature is only 7 or 8 degrees Celsius, she doesn't wear socks for fear that fungus will get on her hands and cause her to suffer from gynecological diseases. I'm afraid of people coughing and spitting; I'm afraid of glass, even people wearing glasses, iron tools, nails, etc. Seeing this, I must keep my mouth shut and try to avoid going out in the future.

Prior to attending therapy, she had spent much of the past six months doing laundry. She can no longer work and rarely leaves the house. The patient is in great pain. She wanted to go to work, but could not go because of illness (Li Fei, Shi Zengjie, Zhang Yalin, 2015).

It can be seen that obsessive-compulsive disorder is generally very serious. If we are healthy, it is difficult to truly understand their pain.

2. Anxiety disorder

Typical: Have you been under too much stress recently?

Anxiety disorders are another disorder that is easily "looked down upon." Life is so tiring, and there are so many burdens on our shoulders. Who hasn’t been anxious?

Indeed, normal anxiety is very common in our lives, and it even has some "benefits" for us. For example, if we have a test tomorrow, the anxiety we feel today can help us prepare harder.

Normal anxiety is a useful emotion. It is an emotional expression and an emotional response that people will have when facing potential or actual danger.

These anxieties are often caused by certain reasons (exams, employment, etc.). ), generally understandable and relatively mild.

But when it comes to anxiety disorders, we may not be able to take it so lightly.

Common pathological anxiety in adults includes: generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobias, and panic disorder.

The list of names seems shocking, and it is. Anxiety disorders may be more common than you think. Seventeen of Americans aged 18 to 54 (approximately 16 to 18 million people) experience anxiety disorders.

The so-called pathological anxiety includes these characteristics: there are no clear factors that cause anxiety, the factors that cause anxiety are out of proportion to the response, the degree is severe, and the duration is too long.

This is completely different from normal anxiety. Anxiety disorder is not only a chronic disease that is easy to relapse, but it is also very easy to be associated with other mental illnesses such as depression.

If you think you have an anxiety disorder, don’t underestimate it.

3. Schizophrenia

Typical misunderstanding: Schizophrenia? Split into several personalities?

When we hear the word "schizoid", we easily think of split personality.

This concept is all too familiar to everyone. After all, this mental illness is dramatic. From movies to novels to TV series, people like to choose this theme for creation.

However, schizophrenia has nothing to do with split personality.

We need to distinguish between two concepts, one is "multiple personality disorder" and the other is "schizophrenia".

First of all, for "multiple personality disorder", a more professional term is "dissociative identity disorder". In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the core symptoms of this disorder are described as follows (Zhang Daolong, 2014):

Having two or more identities characterized by distinct personality states Disintegration may be described in some cultures as an experience of (supernatural) power.

The disintegration of identity involves a significant disruption of self-control and self-control.

With changes related to mood, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensorimotor function.

In fact, this is the mysterious multiple personality we see in movies such as "Deadly ID".

So what is schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia belongs to the category of mental illness and is the most serious category of all mental illnesses.

Normal people have the ability to adaptively perceive, experience and respond appropriately to environmental stimuli, while the ability of mental patients to "contact reality" is impaired, causing serious damage to their social functions (Qian, 2006). Such patients are often unable to care for themselves.

In schizophrenia, "schizophrenia" refers to the separation and inconsistency between a person's subjective feelings, thinking, will, emotion, behavior and objective reality, rather than any organic schizoid disease. Schizophrenia is a disease with high incidence, disability and disability rates, with an average incidence rate of 0.24 (Qian, 2006).

The main symptoms of schizophrenia are very different from "multiple personality". Its main symptoms include loose thinking associations, delusions, alien experiences, auditory hallucinations, apathy, and neurosis. Specifically, they have speech impairment, quick thinking, various delusions (such as murder delusions, etc.), auditory hallucinations, hearing others talking about themselves, ordering themselves, etc. Sometimes visual hallucinations may occur (Qian, 2006).

So although schizophrenia is severe, patients do not "split" into many personalities.

Finally, I would like to say:

Of course there are many psychological/mental illnesses that are often misunderstood, besides these three.

For example, autism is not as simple as "not liking to interact with others", nor is it a "genius disease", but a very serious congenital disorder. People with autism and their families often endure a lot of social incomprehension.

Fortunately, today, more and more people are willing to learn about mental illness. Many film and television works and media that use mental illness as material depict mental illness relatively accurately.

Not abusing the name of mental illness is a sign of respect for the mentally ill.

Reference materials and materials:

1. Li Fei, Shi Zengjie, Zhang Yalin. (2015). "Reason trumps emotion" A case report on manual treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Chinese Journal of Mental Health, Volume 29, Issue 3, Pages 178-181.

2. Qian Yiming. (2006).Abnormal psychology. Beijing: Peking University Press.

3. Zhang Daolong. (2014). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Desk Reference) (5th ed.). Beijing: Peking University Press.