FAQ 1 – Answered by Dr. Parth Goyal
A lot of patients/relatives who come to consult us have quite a few questions. Some of these questions are fairly common and seem to be of great concern to people.
In view of this, we decided to put out an FAQ page, where we hopefully will be able to satisfy some of your queries about psychiatric illness and treatments. Every now & then we will share some of the important FAQs to increase awareness about mental health issues and break the stigma around mental health and treatments.
This time, let us see what Dr. Parth Goyal, Consultant Psychiatrist in Ahmedabad, Parth Hospital, has to say about one or the most commonly asked questions about psychiatric illness.
Are psychiatric illnesses, really illnesses or are they weaknesses in character or lack of motivation?
To answer this better, it’s important to first understand how we diagnose mental illnesses.
Let’s take depression for e.g. Being sad isn’t equal to being depressed.
Being sad for a significantly long period of time (more than 15 days) and not being able to perform your routine activities properly, can be depression.
Being sad is not a mental illness, but being depressed is.
The diagnosis of depression is not given casually or to everyone. There are multiple criteria and guidelines that are followed to diagnose Depression.
Once, depression is diagnosed, it is an illness and not a character flaw or weakness. Similarly, other psychiatric illnesses are also diagnosed using a globally recognised and consistent criteria-based approach.
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