Many people all over the world suffer from mental disorders and Americans are among them. The statistics is such that about 1 in 5 adults has some kind of diagnosed mental disorder. Among the most frequent are major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are also cases when a person has more than one condition at a time.

Here are some of the disorders described:

Depressive Disorders

Under depressive disorders we understand major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, and bipolar disorder. The latter is also included in this list as a patient suffers from depressive episodes as well as from the manic ones. Depression is an extremely wide-spread condition in the US; more than 9.5 percent of adult Americans suffer from it. It is characteristic for this very condition to be found more often among women than men. It can be frequently accompanied with anxiety disorder and substance abuse. It has also been noticed that the age limits of depression have broadened to a younger age group recently if compared with the earlier years when this disorder was a feature of adult and senior people.

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorder is as frequent as depressive states, eating disorders, or substance abuse and they are frequently experienced together. There are different types of anxiety such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and various phobias (i.e. social phobia or agoraphobia). A person can have more than one type of anxiety disorder at a time. Panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, or agoraphobia, and some others are twice as characteristic for women as for men; though this can not be said about cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia.

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders can be divided in the following groups: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. These are mostly female disorders but they happen to men sometimes. They are all nor pleasant but the condition of anorexia especially is not innocent in the case of teenage girls.

Suicide

The suicide rate in the US is miserably high. Mostly these are people with some kind of diagnosed mental disorder (depression is a featuring reason often) and frequently men over 85; though there are more and more suicides committed by young men recently. Also according to the researches women make attempts to kill themselves more often than men but these are men who succeed more often.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ADHD is frequently met among children and adolescents and more characteristic for boys than girls. It is mostly easily detected on the early stages of development (in preschool or elementary school) and can follow to adolescence and even into adulthood in some cases.

Autism

Autism and related disorders are mental disorders that show by the age of 3 in children and mostly affect boys. In the case with girls the symptoms are more severe and cognitive function is affected worse.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder. It has no sex limitations and about 1.1 % of American men and women suffer from this condition. Men discover it earlier then women – frequently in their teens; women develop it usually in the period of their 20s-30s.

Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease generally affects people over 65 years of age and is quite frequent. The life-span after the appearance of the first symptoms is about 8-10 years; the longer the Americans live the higher the illness rate becomes and the proper medication has not been found yet.