When I read or hear about people hurting their own selves or trying to end their own lives, I wonder how a person could become that desperate.

Mental or psychiatric disorders may indeed cause a person to suffer greatly that s/he is unable to function in life. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitting, or occur as a single episode. Many disorders have been described, with signs and symptoms that vary widely; the most common cases classified as mental disorders are:

1. Sleep Disorders: An interruption in sleep patterns that lead to distress and affects daytime functioning.
2. Eating Disorders: The obsessive concerns with weight and disruptive eating patterns that negatively impact physical and mental health.
3. Anxiety Disorders: Characterized by excessive and persistent fear, worry, and anxiety, such disorders manifest in a person’s inappropriate response to a situation, if a person cannot control his/her response, or if the anxiety interferes with normal functioning.
4. Trauma- and Stress-Related Disorders: Following the exposure to a stressful or traumatic event, people with this disorder often have lasting and frightening thoughts and memories of the event.
5. Bipolar Disorder: It is the shift in one’s mood and change in activity and energy levels; it involves persistent feelings of sadness or periods of feeling overly happy, or fluctuations between the two extremes.
6. Impulse-Control Disorders: An inability to control emotions and behaviors, resulting in harm to oneself or others.
7. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): People with OCD have constant thoughts or fears that cause them to perform certain routines; for example, a person with an unreasonable fear of germs washes his/her hands incessantly.
8. Psychotic Disorders: They involve distorted awareness and thinking; two common symptoms of psychotic disorders are hallucinations and delusions.
9. Personality Disorders: Extreme and inflexible personality traits that are distressing to the person and/or cause problems in work, school, or social relationships. The person’s patterns of thinking and behavior significantly differ from the expectations of society.

Do genes have a role in such disorders? Are they socially acquired or emerge because of bad experiences? For some disorders, the evidence suggests that genetics play a significant role, while others appear to be more environmentally influenced.

In 2007, researchers began investigating genetic data generated by studies in 19 countries, including 33,332 people with psychiatric illnesses and 27,888 people free of the illnesses for comparison. They studied scans of people’s DNA, looking for variations along the long stretch of genetic material. In 2013, results came up with five common mental health conditions that not only share symptoms, but also share a variation in their DNA; these conditions depression, bipolar disorder, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, and autism.

During the study, researchers examined the genes of a few families in which psychiatric disorders were prevalent; they found few unusual disruptions of chromosomes that were linked to psychiatric illnesses. However, what surprised them the most was that, while one person with the aberration might get one disorder, a relative with the same mutation had a different one.

It was not clear though whether these families were an exception or they were pointing to a rule about multiple disorders arising from a single genetic glitch. Mental illness itself occurs from the interaction of multiple genes and other factors, such as stress, abuse, or a traumatic event, which can trigger an illness in a person who has an inherited susceptibility to it.

Scientists think there are other factors, such as:

• Certain brain infections;
• Defects in, or injury to, certain areas of the brain;
• Disruption of early fetal brain development;
• Trauma that happens at the time of birth, such as loss of oxygen to the brain, may develop certain conditions, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder;
• Severe psychological trauma;
• Early loss, such as loss of a parent;
• Neglect and poor ability to relate to others.

Over time, researchers will continue identifying more causes for a single personality disorder, says Theodore Millon, Dean of the Florida-based Institute for Advanced Studies in Personology and Psychopathology. Narrowing down potential causes will help psychologists more quickly isolate what might be influencing a particular patient, he says. “Once you identify the cause that seems most probable and most significant, then you can design your therapy in order to unlearn what seemed most problematic for that individual,” says Millon.

The coming years promise to reveal the adversity behind mental illness in an attempt to save many lives captivated in mental disorder incarceration.

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