Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a diagnosis which was first made following the Viet Nam war. Veterans who saw combat in Viet Nam were found to have a number of symptoms not clearly documented in any other diagnostic category. In fact, these symptoms had been observed in combat veterans in many previous wars. It seems that PTSD is constantly being rediscovered.

War has always taken a toll. Accounts throughout history tell of nightmares and other emotional problems associated with the horrors of war. It seems that we repeatedly discover the effects of trauma on humans every time we go to war. Terms like "combat fatigue" and "shell shock" were used in the past to describe some of the effects of combat. These terms are misleading because they imply that the effects of combat are short term. In the DSM-IV the term "Acute Stress Disorder" is used for a similar syndrome lasting less than 30 days.

Mental Disorder

A mental illness or mental disorder is a mental health condition assessed as abnormal or maladaptive and involving significant distress or disability. Mental disorder could be of various types. Some of the major mental disorders are phobias, mood disorders, cognitive disorders, personality disorders, Schizophrenia and substance related disorders like alcohol dependence.

In 1982, the Government of India launched the National Mental Health Programme. The main objective of this program was to increase the mental health care infrastructure available for the benefit of the growing amount of mentally challenged people in the country.

The key goals of the National Mental Health Programme are:

* To make sure that minimum mental health care is available and accessible to everyone in the projected future.
* To encourage people to apply mental health knowledge in general health care and social development.
* To promote community participation in the growth of mental health services and to stimulate efforts towards self help.

Mental health is a part of the primary health care system of India. Community care amenities for people with mental disorders are on hand in certain districts. Other than this, various NGOs offer different types of services to patients with mental disorders.

Sleep

Sleep is the natural state of bodily rest observed in humans and other animals. It is common to all mammals and birds, and is also seen in many reptiles, amphibians and fish. In humans, other mammals, and a substantial majority of other animals which have been studied, such as some species of fish, birds, ants and fruit-flies, regular sleep is essential for survival.

A widely publicized 2003 study performed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine demonstrated that cognitive performance in humans declines with fewer than eight hours of sleep. However, the purposes of sleep are only partly clear and are the subject of intense research.

Criteria for staging, or scoring the stages of sleep, have been changed several times. First described in 1937 by Loomis et al, the staging was changed in 1957 after the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, standardized in 1968 by Rechtschaffen & Kales (R&K) and most recently in 2007 in The AASM Manual for the Scoring of Sleep and Associated Events published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). In addition to adding arousals and respiratory, cardiac, and movement events, the major change in 2007 was the elimination of Stage 4: in the R&K standard, the difference between Stages 3 and 4 (now combined as 3) was that delta waves made up less than 50% of the total wave-patterns in stage 3, while they were more than 50% in stage 4. The R&K standard included four stages of NREM sleep plus REM, sometimes referred to as "stage 5". The newer standard discontinues stage 4 sleep and leaves only stage 3 to describe deep sleep, also known as delta or slow-wave sleep.

Conduct disorder

Conduct disorder is one of the most common disorders in children and adolescents in general population. Conduct disorder or CD involves a number of persistent patterns of problematic behaviors, including oppositional and defiant behaviors and antisocial activities including lying, stealing, destruction of property, deceitful, running away, physical violence and sexually coercive behaviors.

A child is diagnosed with conduct disorder when the symptoms continue for 6 months or more. CD is also known as a "disruptive behavior disorder" due to its impact on a child or adolescents family, school and people around them.

Dependent personality disorder

Dependent personality disorder (DPD), formerly known as asthenic personality disorder is a personality disorder that is characterized by a pervasive psychological dependence on other people. The difference between a 'dependent personality' and a 'dependent personality disorder' is somewhat subjective, which makes a diagnosis sensitive to cultural influences such as gender role expectations.

Clinical interest in dependent personality disorder has existed since Karl Abraham first described the oral character. As a disorder, the personality type first appeared in a War Department technical bulletin in 1945 and later in the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952 (American Psychiatric Association, 1952) as a subtype of passive-aggressive personality disorder. Since then, a surprising number of studies have upheld the descriptive validity of dependent personality traits, viewed as submissiveness, oral character traits, oral dependence, or passive dependence, or as a constellation of both pathological and adaptive traits under the rubric dependency.

Panic disorder

Panic Disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurring severe panic attacks. It may also include significant behavioral change lasting at least a month, and of ongoing worry about the implications or concern about having other attacks. The latter is called Anticipatory Attacks (DSM-IVR). It is important to note that panic disorder is not the same as agoraphobia, although a great deal of people with panic disorder also suffer from agoraphobia.

Panic Disorder sufferers usually have a series of intense episodes of extreme anxiety during panic attacks. These attacks typically last about ten minutes, but can be as short-lived as 1–5 minutes and last as long as twenty minutes or until medical intervention. However, attacks can wax and wane for a period of hours — panic attacks rolling into one another. They may vary in intensity and specific symptoms of panic over the duration (i.e. rapid heartbeat, perspiration, dizziness, dyspnea, trembling, psychological experience of uncontrollable fear, hyperventilation, etc.)

Cognition

Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines, but is generally accepted to mean the process of thought. For example, in psychology and cognitive science it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of concepts; individual minds, groups, organizations, and even larger coalitions of entities, can be modeled as societies which cooperate to form concepts. The autonomous elements of each 'society' would have the opportunity to demonstrate emergent behavior in the face of some crisis or opportunity. Cognition can also be interpreted as "understanding and trying to make sense of the world".

The term cognition (Latin: cognoscere, "to know" or "to recognize") refers to a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences. Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial, conscious or unconscious. These processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, anesthesia, neurology, psychology, philosophy, systemic and computer science.