section_path: Mental health and disorder
section_name: Mental health and disorder
paragraph_text: Mental health and disorder
  
  Mental health is a state of mind characterized by internal equilibrium and well-being in which mental capacities function as they should. Some theorists emphasize positive features such as the abilities of a person to realize their potential, express and modulate emotions, cope with adverse life situations, and fulfill their social role. Negative definitions, by contrast, see mental health as the absence of mental illness in the form of mental disorders. Mental disorders are abnormal patterns of thought, emotion, or behavior that deviate not only from how a mental capacity works on average but from the norm of how it should work while usually causing some form of distress. The content of those norms is controversial and there are differences from culture to culture; for example, homosexuality was historically considered a mental disorder by medical professionals, a view which only changed in the late 20th century.
  
  There is a great variety of mental disorders, each associated with a different form of malfunctioning. Anxiety disorders involve intense and persistent fear that is disproportionate to the actual threat and significantly impairs everyday life, like social phobias, which involve irrational fear of certain social situations. Anxiety disorders also include obsessive–compulsive disorder, for which the anxiety manifests in the form of intrusive thoughts that the person tries to alleviate by following compulsive rituals. Mood disorders cause intensive moods or mood swings that are inconsistent with the external circumstances and can last for extensive periods. For instance, people affected by bipolar disorder experience extreme mood swings between manic states of euphoria and depressive states of hopelessness. Personality disorders are characterized by enduring patterns of maladaptive behavior that significantly impair regular life, like paranoid personality disorder, which leads people to be deeply suspicious of the motives of others without rational basis. Psychotic disorders are among the most severe mental illnesses and involve a distorted relation to reality in the form of hallucinations and delusions, as seen in schizophrenia. Other disorders include dissociative disorders and eating disorders.
  
  There are different approaches to treating mental disorders and the most appropriate treatment usually depends on factors like the type of disorder, its cause, and the person's general condition. Psychotherapeutic methods use personal interaction with a therapist to understand the disorder and help the patient change their patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. Psychoanalysis conceives the source of mental disorders as a conflict between the conscious and the unconscious mind. The therapeutic aim is to gain insight into unconscious conflicts to resolve them. Cognitive behavioral therapy also focuses on insight but gives more emphasis to conscious mental phenomena to identify and change irrational beliefs and negative thought patterns. Behavior therapy is a related approach that relies on classical conditioning to unlearn harmful behaviors rather than alter thought patterns. Humanistic therapies try to help people gain insight into their self-worth and empower them to resolve their problems and discover their potential. Drug therapies use medication to alter the brain chemistry involved in the disorder through substances like antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and anxiolytics. They fall into the domain of psychiatry and are sometimes used in combination with psychotherapeutic methods.