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Lecture Notes

Now when we use the term "mental illness," we're talking about all diagnosable mental disorders, and these come from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, or the DSM. We're currently on the fourth edition, and the fifth edition is being revised and worked on right now, and this book includes hundreds of mental illnesses. So I want you to understand that mental illness goes well beyond anxiety, depression, that we're going to talk about in this chapter, but those are some of the most common, so that's why we'll talk about them here, but you should understand that a mental illness just reflects changes in your thinking, mood or behavior that lead to some sort of impaired function. So in a very general sense, that's the definition of mental illness, and we'll cover, like I said, the common examples—anxiety, depression—and we'll also cover stress, because it can play a role in development of these other mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.