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Mental Health

Overview

Mental health is a broad category, encompassing the emotional stability, behavioral regulation, and/or cognitive functioning of a person. Specific diagnoses include anxiety, depression, and various personality or behavioral disorders. While there is debate around the specific causes of mental health limitations, it can be understood that both biology (chemical or genetic differences) and outside causes (trauma, society), can have an intense effect on human emotions and behaviors.

Who Is Affected

Many studies and methods have been conducted to determine the "prevalence" (number of people who currently have the condition) and "incidence" (number of people annually who have the condition). For these reasons, it’s difficult to make sense of this complex array of information about how many people have mental health conditions and how many experience disability in relation to it.

One of the most comprehensive studies ever undertaken was the 1999 Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health. ¹  It consolidated data from several sources to determine that:

• 1 in 5 people experiences a mental health condition in any given year.
• More than two-thirds of people with mental health conditions experience disability. ²
• 30% of people with mental health conditions experience a work disability.
• Less than 20% of those with mental health conditions are disability program recipients.
• Only 2.8% of the total adult population in the U.S. has a classified severe mental condition, most commonly schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder. ³  Note that severity is determined by level of ability in major life activities, not by type of diagnosis.
• Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health condition. Women are more likely then men to have generalized anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and specific phobias. Depression is the second most common, and 1 in 4 women will experience clinical depression in her lifetime. ⁴
• People with psychiatrically diagnosed conditions are no more dangerous than the general population, and they are much more likely to be victims of violence. More than one quarter of individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) were victims of violent crime in the past year, 11.8 times the rate in the National Crime Victimization Survey (general population). ⁵
• 20% of the U.S. population has a mental condition in any given year. 3-7% of the total population has significant limitations that impact daily life activities and functioning. ⁶

Key Functions Impacted

A basic knowledge of the different functions involved in mental health disorders is helpful to understanding some of the people with whom you may work. Below we provide a list of the functions of mental health.

• Psychomotor - functions relating to movement or muscular activity associated with mental processes, including pace, limb or speech control and energy. 
• Emotional - functions of appropriateness or regulation of emotions or affect; functions of the intensity of emotions.
• Perceptual - functions of the senses- sight, touch, smell, hear, taste and visual-spatial.
• Thought - functions of pace, form, control and content of logical and coherent thinking and processing.   
• Orientation - functions of generally knowing and ascertaining one's own sense of self to others, to time and to one's surroundings.
• Temperament and personality - functions of a reasonable and tempered reaction, including the set of mental characteristics that makes the individual distinct from others.

Understanding the Variety of Conditions

Ensuring access for women with mental health conditions meets a critical need. Domestic violence and sexual assault service providers need to develop a level of comfort and confidence to provide appropriate services and also sustain a stable and supportive environment for all survivors.

Understanding the variety of conditions and the different impact of different types of conditions is one step on the way to building comfort and confidence. In this section, there is an emphasis on explaining diagnostic categories of mental health disorders that is not common in this web resource. The additional information is intended to help a provider make sense of the often bewildering world of mental health. The fuller explanations are intended as initial steps on the road toward greater knowledge and insight that will lead toward building competence and capacity. There are two broad categories of mental health which are quite different in impact on the person and on the service provider: mental and personality.

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