Reasons for Occurrence of Mental Illness The occurrence of mental illness can be caused by different factors or a combination of these several factors. Different explanations are offered by different schools of thought, such as biological, psychological or social explanations for causing mental illness. Current theories however, have mostly acknowledged that all three contribute in varying amounts to a person’s mental ill-health. Many psychiatric diseases can be classified as syndromes, or the association of several clinically recognizable features that do not always have a single cause.
The currently most popular explanation for mental illness is biological explanations. It believes that a person suffering from mental illness may exhibit a difference in brain structure or function or in neurochemistry, either through genetic or environmental vulnerabilities. Research findings for example, have shown that people with schizophrenia have enlarged ventricles and reduced gray matter in the brain. In addition, other studies have also found that imbalance in neurotransmitters could also play a factor in causing mental illness. Studies have focused on the neurotransmitters dopamine, nor epinephrine, and serotonin. If these chemicals are out of balance or may not be working properly, messages sent to the brain may not be sent correctly leading to symptoms of mental illness.
Problems in mental conditions may also be caused by injury to certain areas of the brain.
Moreover, many genetic studies have showed strong evidence that mental illness can be inherited, such as in the cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Many mental illnesses have been found to run in a family, which suggests that people with a mentally ill family member are more likely to develop mental illness as well. Experts link mental illness to abnormalities in many genes, and not just one. It is possible that a person who has inherited a susceptibility to this illness may not develop the illness. The occurrence of mental illness comes from the interaction of multiple genes and other factors such as stress, traumatic event, or abuse, which can trigger an illness in a person who has inherited genes susceptible to it. Brain damage and the development of mental illness had also been found to have been caused by certain infections. For instance, a condition known as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder (PANDA) has been closely associated with the Streptococcus bacteria, linked to the development of certain mental illnesses in children.
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