MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS SERIES

6 Common Mental Malfunctions That Cause Disorderly Conduct

11th day of May—anxiety, mood, eating, personality, trauma, and psychotic disorders are all included

Walking through the mall, she gritted her teeth and plunged through the teeming crowd, dodging and deflecting with every step taken. Her destination was by Macy’s and past Kohl’s and too far away for comfort.

As the crowd thickened and got louder, her heart began to thump faster. Panic began to overwhelm her as her eyes threatened to overflow with tears.

She stopped. She stood there. People passed by, some brushing against her coat, others rudely bumping into her without apology. Closing her eyes, she tried to quell the rising panic within her. But it was no use. The chaos and commotion were too much.

She sat down in the middle of the mall hallway, covered her eyes with her hands, and wept.

This story vividly describes what I’ve felt like in a crowd. There’s too much noise, and too many people coming my way for me to process. It’s too fast, chaotic, cluttered, unorderly, and unorganized for me to handle it for very long. The panic has been so overwhelming in the past that I have come up with a solution.

STAY AWAY FROM MALLS AND ANYPLACE WITH CROWDS!

What is this ‘disorder’ that bothers me and sends me into a panic? Why has this been something that I have dealt with all my life? I’ve thought about it and wondered, and have decided that the dislike of disorder is definitely a mental disorder, unnamed and unknown as of yet. Maybe it will remain a mystery for the rest of my days.

What does disorder mean? Why do the mental health pros use that word along with ‘illness’ or ‘malady’? Maybe they could say Mental Chaos or Mental Clutter. This more accurately describes the cause of my panic mode.

Sigh, I suppose we’d better take a look at the definition of disorder. 😕

Definition of Disorder — Source: Word Hippo 1. Absence of order; state of not being arranged in an orderly manner. 2. A disturbance of civic peace or of public order. 3. (medicine) A physical or mental malfunction.

MALFUNCTION

Aha! the word that describes it all — I can instantly think of a lot of ideas and concepts that are partnered with that word. And when a person has a mental disorder I can picture a malfunction of part of that person’s brain.

In this case, that person is me.

I have a malfunction, the symptom is panic when there’s chaos, clutter, or too much input. The cause? A mental disorder or malfunction. But which one or ones? Maybe I can start to figure it out by looking at this list of common mental disorders and hope it’s not a cluttered or disorganized list. Here goes —

What are some types of mental disorders?

Source: Medline Plus There are many different types of mental disorders. Some common ones include: 1️⃣ Anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and phobias 2️⃣ Mood disorders including depression, and bipolar disorder 3️⃣ Eating disorders 4️⃣ Personality disorders 5️⃣ Post-traumatic stress disorder 6️⃣ Psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia

That wasn’t too bad, in fact, quite interesting. It reveals six different types of disorders, but I know that this is just the beginning of the outline. There must be dozens of classified disorders within each category. Anxiety, mood, eating, personality, trauma, or psychotic, are all disorders that could be the beginnings of an explanation and reason for my panic. All of them seem to fit my symptoms.

So how is a person like me supposed to figure out what is causing the mental malfunction?

I don’t know the answer to that and I really don’t think that anyone does, even those that think they do. There’s a lot of information to process, it seems chaotic, cluttered, disorganized, disorderly —

Excuse me, I think I’ll sit down in the middle of some hall, any will do, and have a good cry now.

Thank you for reading today’s Mental Health Awareness article. Stay tuned for another tomorrow, that is, if I can stop long enough to write one. And in case you missed the previous ones, you can find them here.

Are You Out There family of publications: | Are You Out There | GOLD Writing | BMG Productions | Drop a Line| |🦋Imaginative Fiction Out There🦋 |Read All About It |

Find me: 🦋Kathy K’s Medium profile page 🦋 🦋Subscribe to my stories by email 🦋Join Medium with my referral link

| Gmail | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Substack | Simily | Vocal | |Elegant Literature | Ko-Fi |