Mental Health Conditions

Intro text: Mental health encompasses a person’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Someone may develop mental health conditions due to their environment or biological factors. Medical conditions and past events also increase someone's risk of these concerns. There are several categories of mental health conditions, many of which respond well to mental health medication or talk therapy.
Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L

Written by: Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L on March 26, 2026

Natalie Watkins

Reviewed by: Natalie Watkins on November 2, 2026

Updated On: March 26, 2026

5 min read

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Key takeaways:

  • Mental health covers a person’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. We all experience difficulties with mental health from time to time, though some individuals may develop mental health conditions.
  • Diagnoses may fall under the following categories: anxiety, eating, impulse control, mood, personality, and psychotic disorders. Major and lasting changes in personality, lifestyle choices, and connection to reality are all warning signs that someone may be developing a mental health condition.
  • Someone may seek various forms of talk therapy in combination with medications that address their specific symptoms. It is also important to take independent steps to promote mental health, such as eating healthy, staying hydrated, getting enough sleep, and setting goals.

Understanding mental health

Mental health is a general term that encompasses a person’s emotions, thought patterns, and behaviors. The field of study that addresses mental health is called psychiatry or behavioral health. Mental health can also be used to describe someone’s health status. Good mental health is characterized by balancing out emotional highs and lows to regulate one’s mood, having healthy habits that support general well-being, and fostering supportive relationships with others. [1][2]

Individuals may have difficulty doing this from time to time; however, someone who struggles to develop skills in this area may be diagnosed with a mental health condition (also known as a mental illness).

What can affect mental health?

Childhood trauma can play a big role in someone’s mental health across the lifespan. In addition, socioeconomic difficulties and genetic/biological factors may cause mental health difficulties either on a short-term or long-term basis.[1]

Mental health conditions and disorders

Defining mental health conditions or disorders has been difficult, and some feelings or behaviors previously classed as disorders are now seen as valid ways of experiencing the world.[10] There are several categories of mental health conditions outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5-TR). In addition to the symptoms listed for each condition, DSM-5 requires that the symptoms cause distress to the person experiencing them, or that they impair part of that person’s life.[1][3][4]

Anxiety disorders

These conditions cause debilitating fear of specific situations, objects, or general life circumstances.

  • Agoraphobia: Intense fear of being unable to escape, especially from public places.
  • Claustrophobia: Intense fear of being trapped in small spaces.
  • Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Persistent anxiety from multiple sources.
  • Health anxiety: Excessive fear of becoming ill.
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): Fixed thoughts and compulsive behaviors that feed into one another.
  • Panic disorder: Unpredictable, severe fits of fear.
  • Phobias: Irrational, severe fears related to specific animals, situations, places, or objects.
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Flashbacks, interpersonal difficulties, and heightened alertness after traumatic events.
  • Social anxiety: Irrational fear of social settings.

Eating disorders

Eating disorders are characterised by long-lasting problems around food and eating, which impact physical, mental, and emotional health.

  • Anorexia nervosa (AN): Highly restricted eating behaviors, often characterized by minimal food and nutrition consumption.
  • Binge eating disorder (BED): Episodes of excessive overeating.
  • Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD): A preoccupation with perceived appearance or bodily flaws.
  • Bulimia nervosa (BN): Feeling able to control food intake, leading to short periods of high consumption followed by behaviors such as vomiting or using laxatives to ‘compensate.’

Impulse control disorders

Impulse control disorders cause someone to experience strong urges for harmful or socially unacceptable behaviors.

  • Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED): Intense bursts of aggression toward property, animals, or other people.
  • Kleptomania: Uncontrollable urges to steal property of little to no value.
  • Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD): Intense hostility and disobedience toward authority figures, which often leads to rule-breaking behaviors.
  • Pyromania: Strong urges to set fires.
  • Skin picking disorder: Compulsive scratching, picking of the skin that leads to scarring.
  • Trichotillomania: Hair pulling in response to emotional distress or boredom.

Mood disorders

This set of conditions causes someone to experience mood imbalances, which can include extremely elevated mood or very low mood.

  • Bipolar disorder (BD): Unpredictable mood swings, often from one extreme to another.
  • Cyclothymia: Fluctuations between mildly low mood and mildly elevated mood.
  • Depression with psychosis: Chronic low mood with a loss of connection to reality.
  • Major depressive disorder (MDD): Persistent low mood that can last for months.
  • Postnatal/postpartum depression: Low mood that stems from hormonal changes in the months after someone gives birth.
  • Seasonal affective disorder (SAD): A temporary low mood that is consistently associated with the seasons.

Personality disorders

These conditions cause someone to develop core beliefs, feelings, and behaviors that are drastically different from those of others.

  • Antisocial personality disorder: Impulsive behaviors that typically disregard the feelings and needs of others.
  • Borderline personality disorder (BPD): Distorted thinking and persistent instability/impulsivity related to emotions, behaviors, and relationships.
  • Histrionic personality disorder: intense displays of emotions and attention-seeking behavior.
  • Narcissistic personality disorder: Self-importance, strong need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others.

Psychotic disorders

Any condition that causes someone to lose contact with reality and experience things that others do not.

  • Delusional disorder: Persistent inability to tell real beliefs from those that are imagined.
  • Dissociative disorder: A disconnect from one’s identity due to prolonged, severe stress.
  • Postpartum psychosis: An inability to tell what is real and what is not, which stems from hormonal changes in the months after a woman gives birth.
  • Schizoaffective: A combination of hearing, seeing, and/or believing things that are not real, and mood changes.
  • Schizophrenia: Hearing, seeing, and/or believing things that are not real.

Prevalence of mental health conditions

In 2021, 22.8% of adults in the United States were living with a mental health condition. Anxiety disorders are the most commonly diagnosed mental health condition in the U.S., affecting 19.11% of individuals. Other common mental health conditions across the nation include depression (8.3%), posttraumatic stress disorder (3.6%), and bipolar disorder (2.8%). [5][6] Mental health diagnoses are more common in individuals who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (50.2%) and are non-Hispanic mixed/multiracial (34.9%) than they are in other groups.

  1. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5-TR). Psychiatry.org; American Psychiatric Association. https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm
  2. National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Caring for Your Mental Health. Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/caring-for-your-mental-health
  3. National Health Service. (n.d.) Mental Health Conditions. Retrieved from https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/
  4. Mental Health UK. (n.d.). Mental Health Conditions. Retrieved from https://mentalhealth-uk.org/help-and-information/conditions/
  5. World Health Organization. (2022). Mental Disorders. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-disorders
  6. National Alliance on Mental Illness. (2023). Mental Health by the Numbers. Retrieved from https://www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/mental-health-by-the-numbers/
Brittany Ferri

Author

Brittany Ferri

Brittany Ferri holds a PhD in Integrative Mental Health and is an occupational therapist, health writer, medical reviewer, and book author.

Activity History - Last updated: March 26, 2026, Published date: March 26, 2026

Natalie Watkins

Reviewer

Natalie Watkins

Natalie has worked closely with trauma victims and survivors of domestic violence to help rebuild a sense of safety and confidence.

Activity History - Medically reviewed on November 2, 2026 and last checked on March 26, 2026

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