For more than a century, psychology has been responsible for addressing all types of psychological alterations that can cause discomfort or suffering in people, as well as treating each imbalance with the tools that best adapt to each case. Part of these psychopathologies especially influence our way of experiencing emotions.
In today’s article we will focus on emotional disorders, one of the most common in today’s society and that generate the most pain, discomfort or anguish in people who suffer from them daily.
Emotional disorders are those psychological disorders that directly affect the emotional state of people which often interferes with their normal functioning in daily life and their normal relationship with their environment.
If you have an emotional disorder or want to know in depth what the most common emotional disorders are and the pathologies most suffered from around the world, check out our selection today.
1. Mood disorders
The state of mind that people have at a given moment shapes the way we perceive the world around us and it also greatly conditions the way in which we decide to live our lives daily.
There is a type of psychological alteration that specifically affects people’s mood, which significantly interferes with people’s lives, as well as their ability to carry out day-to-day tasks and activities. We are talking, as is evident, about the so-called affective or mood disorders.
Mood disorders are mental health disorders that are characterized by the presence of severe emotional disturbances in the person who suffers from them, as well as distorted moods that do not correspond to their present circumstances.
This type of disorder causes that we experience prolonged periods of excessive sadness, emptiness, anguish or discomfort (depression) or euphoria, activation or extreme happiness (mania). Therefore, depression and mania can be considered the two extremes of mood disorders.
1.1. major depression
Major depression is one of the most common emotional disorders that exist, and consists of the existence of long periods of extreme sadness in the person who suffers from it.
The main symptoms of major depression are unhappiness, anguish, melancholy, frustration or low mood and this disorder can be caused by a wide variety of different causes.
Among the main causes of major depressive disorder we can find genetic or family causes, hormonal causes, stressful events in the past, alcoholism or drug addiction, and sleeping problems.
1.2. Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression, since it is a disorder characterized by alternating periods of depression and mania.
These clearly marked periods are characterized by symptoms of euphoria, hyperactivity, irritability and accelerated speech (in the manic period) and by symptoms of psychomotor retardation, hypersomnia and extreme sadness in depressive episodes.
1.3. Substance-induced mood disorder
Substance-induced mood disorder is caused, as its name suggests, by continued exposure to consumption of a drug or medication with psychoactive effects.
Depending on the type of substance used, the symptoms of this type of disorder can be manic or depressive.
Anxiety disorders and those associated with trauma constitute the second of the large groups that make up the most common emotional disorders throughout the world.
Anxiety disorders have anxiety as the main differentiating element that can manifest itself in symptoms as diverse as activation, stress, excessive sweating, restlessness, sleeping problems, irritability, fatigue fear of the future and constant suffering.
Anxiety disorders can be defined as those in which anxiety is predominant and defining, that is, a feeling of constant discomfort and worry about possible coming catastrophes or permanent fear of a future full of dangers.
2. 1. Generalized anxiety disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder is one of the most common disorders in people who suffer from anxiety and is characterized by a generalized feeling of distress and excessive worry with no apparent trigger for at least 6 consecutive months.
This generalized anxiety affects all aspects of a person’s life and usually causes tiredness, fatigue, irritability, nervousness, sleeping problems, muscle tension or problems concentrating.
2. 2. Phobias
Phobias are irrational fears motivated by a particular object, living being or situation, such as blood, spiders, fear of flying or fear of being in social situations.
These irrational fears also have a great impact on the life of the person who suffers from them and make it difficult to carry out each of their daily activities or responsibilities normally.
3. Post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder develops experiencing or witnessing an emotionally destabilizing event that can affect the person intensely. From that moment on, people with PTSD progressively remember the traumatic event and can no longer have the life they had before due to the terror generated by the experience.
These traumatic events can be of different nature, among the most common we find traffic accidents, the experience of natural disasters, situations of violence, sexual abuse or a near-death experience.
