mental illness
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Wikipedia.
Related to mental illness: schizophrenia
mental illness
any of various disorders in which a person's thoughts, emotions, or behaviour are so abnormal as to cause suffering to himself, herself, or other people
mental illness
disease of the mind. Mental illness varies from transitory episodes of anxiety or depression (see NEUROSES) which interfere with normal daily living through the mood changes involved, to the PSYCHOSES which may require in-patient psychiatric treatment to control the severe changes in mood and behaviour associated with them.A sociology of mental illness has developed as a response to epidemiological studies which have pointed to social causes of mental illness (e.g. depression and bad housing), and from the impetus of the theories of the anti-psychiatrists, such as LAING (1960) and Szasz (1961). See also ANTI-PSYCHIATRY, MADNESS.
mental illness
[′men·təl ′il·nəs] (psychology)
Any form of mental aberration; usually refers to a chronic or prolonged disorder in which there are wide deviations from the normal.