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Mental disorders are common in medical practice and may present either as a primary disorder or as a comorbid condition. The prevalence of mental or substance use disorders in the United States is 18.5%,…

Tourette’s disorder is a rare disorder in which the child demonstrates multiple involuntary motor and vocal tics. A tic is a sudden, rapid, recurrent, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization.

Epidemiology
Tourette’s…

Conduct disorder is defined as a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or important age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated. Disordered behaviors include…

ADHD is characterized by a persistent and dysfunctional pattern of overactivity, impulsiveness, inattention, and distractibility.

Etiology
The disorder runs in families and cosegregates with mood disorders, substance use disorders, learning…

Autistic disorder is the most common of the pervasive developmental disorders of childhood onset.
It is characterized by the triad of impaired social interactions, impaired ability to communicate, and restricted repertoire of activities…

Learning disorders are characterized by performance in a specific area of learning (e.g., reading, writing, arithmetic) substantially below the expectation of a child’s chronologic age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education. The (DSM-IV) identifies three learning…

Patients with mental retardation have subnormal intelligence (as measured by IQ) combined with deficits in adaptive functioning. IQ is defined as the mental age (as assessed using a WISC-R) divided by the chronologic age and…

Anorexia nervosa is a severe eating disorder characterized by low body weight. Anorexia nervosa is diagnosed when a person’s body weight falls below 85% of the ideal weight for that individual. The weight loss must…

Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by binge eating with the maintenance of body weight.

Epidemiology
The estimated point prevalence of bulimia nervosa is 1 % to 3% of women. The…

Young survivors of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami, Kashmir earthquake, Gulf Coast hurricanes and other natural disasters face high risk of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression…

Nursing homes should consider the potential benefits of routinely giving over-the-counter painkillers to residents who have dementia and are likely to have from chronic pain, Saint Louis University research suggests.

Substance-Induced Mood Disorder

Substance-induced mood disorder is diagnosed when medications, other psychoactive substances, ECT, or phototherapy are proximate events and the likely cause of the mood disturbance. All aforementioned types of mood…

Cyclothymic disorder is a recurrent, chronic, mild form of bipolar disorder in which mood typically oscillates between hypomania and dysthymia. It is not diagnosed if a person has had either a manic episode or a…

Dysthymic disorder is a mild, chronic form of major depression.

Epidemiology
The lifetime prevalence is 6%.

Etiology
Because dysthymia is often conceptualized as a milder, chronic form of major…

The bipolar disorders are bipolar 1 disorder, bipolar II disorder, and cyclothymia.

Bipolar I Disorder

Bipolar I disorder is the most serious of the bipolar disorders and is diagnosed after at least one episode…

Bipolar II disorder is similar to bipolar I disorder except that mania is absent in bipolar II disorder and hypomania (a milder form of elevated mood than mania) is the essential diagnostic finding.

Unipolar disorders are major depressive disorder and dysthymic disorder.

Major Depressive Disorder

Middle-age adults who go on periodic drinking binges may face a heightened risk of dementia later in life, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that even among adults…

In brief psychotic disorder, the patient experiences a full psychotic episode that is short-lived. It can be temporally related to some stressor or occur postpartum, but is also seen without any apparent antecedent.

Essentially, this is schizophrenia that fails to last for 6 months and does not involve social withdrawal.

Epidemiology

The validity of this diagnosis is under question.
Outcome studies of this disorder indicate…