Causes of mental disorders
impairment of the mind causing disruption in normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, or social interactions, and accompanied by significant distress or dysfunction
A mental disorder is an impairment of the mind disrupting normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, or social interactions, and accompanied by significant distress or dysfunction. The causes of mental disorders are very complex and vary depending on the particular disorder and the individual. Although the causes of most mental disorders are not fully understood, researchers have identified a variety of biological, psychological, and environmental factors that can contribute to the development or progression of mental disorders. Most mental disorders result from a combination of several different factors rather than just a single factor.
Risk factors
Risk factors for mental illness include psychological trauma, adverse childhood experiences, genetic predisposition, and personality traits. Correlations between mental disorders and substance use are also found to have a two way relationship, in that substance use can lead to the development of mental disorders and having mental disorders can lead to substance use/abuse. This effect is stronger and more reliable in some substance use than others, such as smoking.
Mental illnesses have risk factors including unequal parental treatment, adverse life events and drug use in depression, migration and discrimination, childhood trauma, loss or separation in families, cannabis use in schizophrenia and psychosis, parenting factors, child abuse, family history (e.g. of anxiety), temperament and attitudes (e.g. pessimism) in anxiety.
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This entry incorporates text from “Causes of mental disorders” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.