Introduction to Mental Disorders

• In this family of topic centers you will find information concerning various mental disorders including depression, generalized anxiety, panic, bipolar disorder, attention deficit and schizophrenia, to name but a few.
• There is always a question of whether a given disorder or issue would be better classified as a "mental" or a "medical-biological" disorder.
• To some degree or another, there is no really firm distinction between mental and medical disorders.
• Many so called 'mental' disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are now known to be primarily biologically based, while other 'medical' disorders have been shown to have a large 'psychological' component.
• Therefore, many, including this site have decided to follow the lead set out by the authors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the standard reference used by psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers in classifying and describing mental disorders.

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