How to fight with your brain?

A mental disorder is characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour.  It is usually associated with distress or impairment in important areas of functioning. There are many different types of mental disorders.  Mental disorders may also be referred to as mental health conditions. The latter is a broader term covering mental disorders, psychosocial disabilities and (other) mental states associated with significant distress, impairment in functioning, or risk of self-harm.  This fact sheet focuses on mental disorders as described by the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11). In 2019, 1 in every 8 people, or 970 million people around the world were living with a mental disorder, with anxiety and depressive disorders the most common (1). In 2020, the number of people living with anxiety and depressive disorders rose significantly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Initial estimates show a 26% and 28% increase respectively for anxiety and major depressive disorders in just one year (2). While effective prevention and treatment options exist, most people with mental disorders do not have access to effective care. Many people also experience stigma, discrimination and violations of human right. At any one time, a diverse set of individual, family, community, and structural factors may combine to protect or undermine mental health. Although most people are resilient, people who are exposed to adverse circumstances – including poverty, violence, disability, and inequality – are at higher risk. Protective and risk factors include individual psychological and biological factors, such as emotional skills as well as genetics.  Many of the risk and protective factors are influenced through changes in brain structure and/or function.     here are many conditions which can affect our brain health, and this can have a wide range of effects on our ability to function normally. Scientific advances in recent years have made it clear that the brain plays a central role in mental health. We understand mental illnesses as conditions that negatively affect a person's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Mental illness disrupts one's ability to relate to others and to function when meeting the demands of daily life.

Mental illnesses include mood disorders such as major depression and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and anxiety disorders, to name a few. Researchers studying the role of the brain in these illnesses have found strong evidence that imbalances in certain types of neurotransmitters can cause abnormalities in the communication among neurons. When this occurs, the brain may not send the proper instructions to the body, which may, in turn, lead to certain symptoms of mental illness.    Dementia is another excellent example of the overlap between brain abnormalities and psychiatric symptoms. As an illness with both neurological and psychological symptoms, dementia affects thoughts, personality, feelings, and behavior. The causes of dementia, although not fully understood, have been in large part, traced to structural and chemical deterioration in the brain. For this reason, various types of dementia are diagnosed and treated by teams of professionals that include both neurologists and psychologists, both of whom are trained to assess and treat illnesses that involve brain health.