Major mental illnesses are those that present obvious and undeniable signs and symptoms, both to the person experiencing them and to those observing them.
They are chronic and/or recurrent. They are often severe enough to prevent a person from working, playing and fulfilling responsibilities.
Major Depression
Is a major mental illness of mood or affect. A bottomless pit of despair and hopelessness, a well into which one slides deeper and further into terrififying depths with no power or strength to escape; an isolation of the mind so severe that there is no hope for recovery and no energy to even try. This is depression. There is no pleasure no excitement and no interst in people or a life once cherished. There is flatness, nothingness and psychic pain.
"I am now the most miserable man living," Abraham Lincoln wrote during one of his depressions. "If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth" William Styron, in his memoirs, called his depression "a howling tempest in the brain" and Winston Churchill referred to his as being "a black dog"
Depression can be a deadly disease. Suicide is a result for too common in untreated depression.
Despite the depressed person feelings to the contrary, depression is a highly treatable illness. Medication, elctroconvulsive therapy, psychotherapy and hospitalization all play a role.
Watch for the next article in the series which will deal with signs and symptoms, diagnoses (how do I know it is depression?), risks, treatments and more.
Bipolar Affective Disorder
Formerly, and still commonly known as manic depression, bipolar disorder is one of extremes of mood, or affect, from the highest peaks to the lowest depths. It encompasses major depression at the low point and uncontrolled mania at the high point, despair and euphoria. Thus the name bipolar, the having of "two poles."
Nearly two millon Americans suffer from this often debilitating major mental illness. Continued episodes of mood swings often lead to disability. Novelist Virgina Woolf in a letter to a friend had this to say about hypomania,"the state of being just less than manic." "As an experience, madness is terrific, I can assure you, and not be sniffed at."
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