Reasons for mental disorders

Q: ' 50m Pakistanis suffering from mental disorders ' - DAWN Side effects of marrying their own sisters? What do you think?

Krishna: 1 in every 8 people in the world live with a mental disorder
Mental disorders involve significant disturbances in thinking, emotional regulation, or behaviour(2)
Anxiety, depression, Bipolar disorders, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, eating disorders, disruptive behaviours and dissocial disorder, neurodevelopmental disorders - all these come under mental disorders.
A mental disorder is characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour. It is usually associated with distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.
The causes of mental disorders are very complex and vary depending on the particular disorder and the individual. 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 in a combination of several different factors rather than just a single factor (3).
Genetic research has produced intriguing biological insights into mental illness, showing that particular gene variations predispose some individuals to conditions such as depression and schizophrenia.
Now, thanks to a growing union of epidemiology and molecular biology, the role of the environment in the etiology of mental illness has become more clear. Mental illnesses increasingly fall into the realm of environmental health too (1).
Scientists define “environment” in the realm of mental illness broadly, some going so far as to suggest it encompasses everything that isn’t an inherited gene. That’s a departure from traditional thinking in environmental health, however, which has historically viewed environmental threats in the context of infectious agents, pollutants, and other exogenous factors that influence the individual’s physical surroundings. Environmental threats to mental health include these traditional parameters—along with pharmaceutical and illicit drugs, injuries, and nutritional deficiencies—but also consist of psychosocial conditions that relate to the individual’s perceptions of the social and physical world.
Any number of circumstances—for instance, sexual abuse, falling victim to crime, or the breakup of a relationship—can produce psychosocial stress. But experts assume each of these circumstances triggers more primal reactions, such as feelings of loss or danger, which serve to push victims toward a particular mental state. “Feelings of pure loss might lead to depressive disorders, while feelings of pure danger might lead to anxiety disorders.
And feelings of loss and danger might lead to both simultaneously.” Either alone or in combination, psychosocial and physiological stressors can interact with genetic vulnerability to alter brain chemistry and thus alter the individual’s mental health.
Several lines of evidence point to an environmental role in psychiatric disease. Among identical twins, if one becomes schizophrenic, the risk to the other is on average less than 50%, suggesting that environmental influences must somehow be involved. Similar findings have been observed with depression and other mental disorders.
Risk factors for mental illness include psychological trauma, adverse childhood experiences, genetic predisposition, and personality traits. Correlations of mental disorders with drug use include almost all psychoactive substances, e.g., cannabis, alcohol, and caffeine.

Mental illnesses have risk factors, for instance including unequal parental treatment, adverse life events and drug use in depression, migration and discrimination, childhood trauma, loss or separation in families, and cannabis use in schizophrenia and psychosis, and parenting factors, child abuse, family history (e.g. of anxiety), and temperament and attitudes (e.g. pessimism) in anxiety. Many psychiatric disorders include problems with impulse and other emotional control.

Major Illicit Drug Producing and Major Drug-Transit Countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela (4).

Afghanistan is the world’s largest opium producer and exporter but it is also an important consumer. The country accounted for 7% of total world demand, or 80 mt a year, for an estimated 150,000 users in 2008 (rising to 200,000-250,000 in 2009).But all of Afghanistan’s neighbours report worrying levels of opium use. Excluding China, consumption in the countries bordering Afghanistan (the Islamic
Republic of Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) is estimated at 650 mt per year; 60% of global consumption. Although small-scale cultivation occurs in these countries, such as in Pakistan and Central Asia.

The country you mentioned is one of the major drug producing and consuming countries. That might be the problem too!

Why single out a particular country? There might be genetic predisposition because of marriages between close relatives. But in a less developed - economically as well as socially and scientifically - country, all the factors mentioned above might become contributing factors to these disorders.

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