Week 9: Mental Illness
The topic of this week was again amazing and full of useful information. Again I have to speak well about the book because it describes mental illnesses from different points of view. For example, the molecular medicine in the book is discussed with all the steps that are important for the creation of new medicines.
We learned about anxiety disorders caused by fear, and examples of such disorders can be panic disorder, agoraphobia, and social phobia. The interesting is the part about the stress response and what are the main characters of stress. And how it is possible to treat these disorders.
On the other hand, the population suffers from affective disorders, which are disorders of mood which can be called depression. The main two systems implicated in these disorders are the serotonin and the norepinephrine systems. In the book, the treatment description is stated. For example, electroconvulsive therapy, psychotherapy, and antidepressants are the main tools for dealing with affective disorders. I was quite surprised that the treatment can be used lithium which helps the patient with depression.
At the end of the chapter, Schizophrenia was studied, and I finally understood what this term means. It is a disorder whose patients have divided minds and suffer delusions, hallucinations, reduced expression of emotions, and memory impairment.
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