What is Mental Illness

Hello, my name is Ebony Kimario, licensed master social worker, and this video is going to go over the definition of mental illness.

Mental illness is when the brain’s normal way of processing hinders a person’s functioning. Mental illness can look different on everyone; even with the same diagnosis, people can have very different symptoms. Symptoms can be widespread—they cover things like loss of motivation, overwhelming thoughts, feelings of mania, hearing voices, and a whole host of other things. The difference in just having an issue versus a diagnosis is the amount that it impacts a person’s life. When a person is not able to function the way that they want, that is when we start to get into diagnosis territory. As I said, everyone is impacted differently by mental illness, so because there are different impacts, we’re also going to get different treatments. Treatments can be administered in a variety of different ways. It can be done privately, where a person makes the decision to work on their mental illness alone—not necessarily the most recommended path, but it’s certainly a good starting place. Treatment can be done on a community level, where a person involves their friends, families, perhaps religious characters, or other people from the community that they rely on and trust. Or treatment can be done with a professional—that’s anyone from a psychiatrist to a doctor to a social worker to a therapist, someone who’s been trained to work with mental illness.

When doing treatment, there are three different routes that tend to be followed. One would be therapy. Therapy is when a person who’s experiencing mental illness would sit and speak with the professional. It can be in a group setting, an individual setting, it can be done remotely through telehealth, or it can be done the old-fashioned way by sitting in the office. Medication can also help with mental illness. Medication needs to be prescribed by the appropriate professional—generally a personal care physician, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist would be able to prescribe what was needed. Lastly, lifestyle changes can have a huge impact on mental illness. This includes things like being connected to loved ones, exercise, changes in diet, meditation, or any other changes that a person makes so that they’re better equipped to deal with their environment. These can be done separately or there can be a combination of all of them in order to create the best treatment plan possible for that individual. What’s on one person’s treatment plan and on another person’s treatment plan can be totally different, even if they’re dealing with the same diagnosis. One person may need more medication, whereas another person needs less. One person may be able to involve more of their community, whereas another person may not have that same support. So, depending on the person is how we would deal with their particular diagnosis.

When seeking treatment, there are a few things that we want to make sure get covered. First off, identifying symptoms—it can be difficult to tell exactly what symptoms are coming from a particular diagnosis, whereas some things could be environmental, some things are a response to trauma, and some things are simply because of the diagnosis. So, we want to clear-cut make sure we know what the symptoms are, we want to make sure we know what the triggers are for those symptoms, and lastly, the whole point in treatment is to figure out a way to lessen the impact of the mental illness. I say lessen the impact because sometimes a cure is possible, but most often with mental illness a cure is not possible, and instead these changes need to be long-lasting throughout a person’s life. Mental illness means that their brain just functions differently, and so no matter what our treatment options are, we’re not going in and changing the brain. So, we want to make sure that whatever the treatment options are, they are lessening the impact of the symptoms and they’re sustainable long term.

Let’s talk about some of the things that mental illness is not. It is not an indicator of intelligence, it is not an indicator of potential, and it is not an indicator of success. A person with mental illness can still lead the same life that they want; they just need to add some adjustments to deal with the symptoms. Lastly, the biggest indicator of success with mental illness is going to be a person’s commitment to treatment—figuring out what does work, what doesn’t work, being willing to try over and over again can be very, very difficult and a daunting task. But the more committed a person is to their own wellness, the more success they’re likely to have in the future.

Thanks for watching.