Mental health professionals now see many distinctions in the type of disorders that are common. For example, today a nervous breakdown is more likely to be diagnosed as a stress-related disorder rather than a psychotic disorder that might require hospitalisation. An increasingly common mental health issue is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), first diagnosed as shell-shock in soldiers returning from the First World War and now recognised as a condition affecting anyone who has suffered a situation of psychological trauma.
Stress, in fact, plays a major role in most mental disorders, whether psychotic or neurotic. The medical profession uses a process known as the stress vulnerability model to determine if an individual is suffering from mental health problems.
This model acknowledges that an individual has unique biological, psychological and social elements with strengths and vulnerabilities when faced with stress. Therefore, how each person reacts to stress will differ and so someone who is highly vulnerable to the effects of stress will cross the line into mental health problems with lower stress levels than someone who is less vulnerable to the effects of stress.
Stress is also relative and what is stressful for one person is easily managed for another. Meanwhile, the source of the stress and an individual’s genetic and personal history will also play a part in determining how the individual reacts.
Mental health professionals suggest that people use the stress vulnerability model to examine their own situation and, where necessary, perhaps change things to prevent them crossing into the area of mental health problems.