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The diagnosis of mental illnesses is a very delicate one and, most often the times, it can be wrong. Now, The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Dysfunctional Behaviors) recommend that you call them dysfunctional behaviors because the person may well reason or have good ideation or solid mind while still behaving bad.
In dysfunctional behaviors, heredity often plays only part of the role in relation to the environment as it is in the evolution of the living beings (something you may not believe in). There are also two major divisions of dysfunctional behaviors: organic (being the more severe) and non organic. The organic dysfunctional behaviors are caused by organic or physiologic causes like drugs that alter the chemistry of the body and the brain, traumatism like brain injuries and some illnesses that destroy or injure the nervous sytem, like it may happen with AIDS, syphilis, mad cows� disease, and Alzheirner�s disease. The DSM-IV code (PSYweb, Mental Health Site) also recommends that any diagnosis of non organic dysfunctional behavior includes five axes or 5 parts, since a dysfunctional behavior may be more or less severe and may happen to be due to or be concomitant other dysfunctions of the body. Those 5 axes are: (1) the dysfunctional behaviors per se (emedicine: Psychiatry, (2) the personality problem underlying the dysfunction, (3) any physical illness that can predispose to this dysfunction, (4) the social or environmental problems that may act as precipitating factors and (5) a global assessment of functioning or of dealing with problems or situations of everyday life. A dysfunctional behavior that affects the whole personality is a major one and is often called a psychiatric disorder: schizophrenia, mania, paranoia, major depression and any combination of them. The maniac is often a very outgoing person and many maniacs cannot fit into this category since they have only minor dysfunctional behavior that may even go unnoticed. The schizophrenic is very withdrawn and non communicative person. The paranoiac has some major troubles of ideation like he may think that he is from a superior race and does not communicate with everybody. The depressive person withdraws herself from society during her depression. Those major dysfunctional behaviors prevent the person to function socially, to earn her life when this is possible, to have good friends when this is possible and to raise her children when it happens him to have. Personality�s disorder is an intermediate form of dysfunctional behavior. It includes any of the category quoted above but at a lesser degree, being called, for example, schizoid or avoidant instead of schizophren, cyclo-thymic, obsessive-compulsive or histrionic instead of maniac, and narcissic or paranoid instead of paranoiac. Sexual dysfunctional behavior is even a lesser degree of dysfunction than the later since it affects only part, nevertheless important, of the development of personality - the psychosexual development or sphere. Indeed, there are many theories of personality and we, as human beings, have many needs, basic ones like the biological or physiologic needs, the psycho-sexual or basic communicative needs, the higher communicative or psycho-social needs and the intellectual or religious needs. Other minor dysfunctional behaviors are those related to gender identity, like homosexuality and to discomfort of the personality like the anxiety disorders, the conversion disorders like hysteria, and the phobias. They are called neuroses. Any of these axes or any combination of them may be present. Most of the non organic dysfunctional behaviors and some of the organic dysfunctional behaviors are developmentally related, i.e.. they are linked to the development of the personality that can go weird in many circumstances or to some growing neurological impairment of many causes (ethiologies) and therefore can be seen among the children. Here, like before, there is much overlapping. Here also, heredity and environment are both at stake more or less, depending on the case. |