The patient’s entourage is crucial in the progression of the disease.
More than one in five adults are affected by psychiatric disorders in France, according to the Brain Institute. Among them, anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders… Like any illness, psychological disorders can be treated but some with more difficulty than others.
Besides, is there a mental illness that is more difficult to treat than others? “No way” answers Dr Guillaume Camelot, psychiatrist. “Mental suffering takes different forms and in psychiatry, different psychiatric illnesses. Firstly, there is the type of mental illness and the degree of severity of the illness. The difficulty in treating the illness depends more on its degree of severity and certain resistance factors, as well as the type of disease.”
Certain symptoms indicate the severity of a mental illness and complicate its recovery. “Among the most worrying is the impairment of the patient’s discernment. It implies their ability to make choices freely in relation to their illness.” This abolition of discernment is one of the serious factors, whatever the type of illness. For example, we find it “at the house of a patient suffering from a psychotic disorder, schizophrenia, who would be suffering from an extremely invasive delirium, who would no longer distinguish between reality and what belongs to delusional ideas, or even a patient suffering from bipolar disorder. In this case, the disease is more difficult to treat.
Another serious factor is the impairment of instinctive behaviors, that is to say those which relate to the basic needs of the individual. The patient has significant and lasting difficulty sleeping, he eats less, loses weight, and has difficulty concentrating. “These are really elements that will cause concern in psychiatry” and which complicate the treatment of the disease. “There are psychiatric illnesses which will be temporary and which, with treatment and appropriate care, can be in total remission (depression for example, editor’s note). While others unfortunately cannot be cured.” Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are among these but they can be stabilized.
Faced with these problems, Dr Camelot recalls the importance for the patient of being surrounded. “It is extremely difficult to accept a diagnosis of mental illness, it can be hard to talk about it to those around you. This can increase social vulnerability and therefore slow down access to care. However, the environment is the first degree of support from relatives available to the patient If the person is in a situation of isolation or precariousness, there is not at all the same prognosis. concludes the psychiatrist.