An Enlightening Talk-Mental Disorders

Today I went for a free talk organised by MCA with my mum. The title, loosely translated to english, is - ' Understanding Mental Disorder', given by a popular psychologist Ms leong Huey Mei. Perhaps, mental disorders to some ppl merely mean, ppl who are 'sot', ppl who are on the verge of being sent to tg rambutan. However, she highlighted 6 types of common mental illness, which i feel some of which I can relate to. Furthermore, it's interesting for those of us who are in the health-science fields. (at least it is interesting to me)

1)Depression
The person will lose interest in stuff that he/she normally does, feels extreme fatigue( the feeling is like one which you get after having Dvd marathon during holidays), loses aim in life, probably lsoe appetite, have insomnia or the converse ( sleep constantly) and worse, have thought of suicide.

2) Panic Attack
The person will probably feel rapid breathing which leads to dizziness during driving, chest pain (different from that of an heart attack.Usually the patient complaint of his chest being 'pressed'.) This condition is usually due to stress in life. And I do know an aunty who had this condition; she went for a check-up and found dat her heart is alright. So she was smart enuff to know dat ir's stress so she cut down on fetcing her kids. The last time I heard of her, she is doing just fine=)

3) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
The person have recurrent thought of doing something, e.g. he takes hours to shower coz he has this compulsive thought that he is dirty. Another example will be some1 who constantly checks if he has dropped something for every 4 steps he has walked.Not gonna bore you all with the elaborations here though.

4) Anorexia
I guess most of us have read about this condition. The person refrains herself(usually it is a 'her', for reasons we all noe) from eating for fear of being fat. In actual fact, they are far from that. However, it's as though they have this 'Halls of mirror' at home which reflects otherwise to them. Sigh, hope these ppl do find their path back, after all, what is LIFE without Food?

5) Bulimia
This one is also commonly known to us, isnt it? The person eats A HUGE amount of food in the shortest possible duration of time. Mind you, they aren't indulging in the food ( like how I get hyper when I eat nices stuff like dim sums-keep on having this 'i want more' tot. Lol). They juxt gulped down the whole thing. Later, they will be plagued with extreme guilt, and hit by the facts that they are gonna be fat. Hence, they will try means of 'removing' those food, whether through vomitting or taking drug which helps in bowel-emptying. Ms Leong cited one case that the patient has reached such a 'divine' state so much so that she doesn't need to resolve to the mentioned means. She just has to look at the toilet bowl and voila~out comes the 'food'.

5) Schizophenia
This is one of the most serious type of mental disorders. The person will have hallucinations (=hearing 'voices' which are non-existent and probably 'see' something which are non-existent as well). Mind you, they are blessed with perfectly fine eyesight and has no 'extra' ability. =P They have imsomnia and probably lose the normal function of daily life.

In malaysia, going to a psyhologist or a psychiatrist ain't common. In overseas, going to such professionals are as normal as you and I going to a GP due to common cold and flu. After all, there are scientific explanations to mental disorders. We do learn about neurotransmitter, hippocampus all those right? I do believe in evidence-based studies. Rmb I talked about the book 'Die Gluckformel' which explores the formulas to constant happiness based on researches and studies carried out? How I wish I had the eng version but i have checked-it's not available. =( So meanwhile, I gotta struggle with reading traditional chinese vertically, and trying to decipher those terminologies like 'synaptic vesicles', 'dopamine', 'neurotransmitter' in traditional chinese. it's either that or I have to pick up German=P It is a good book, though I have only read Part 1 of the 4-part book. This goes to show how busy I am huh? Even P and P has to take a back seat.