Mental Disorders In Today's Society

There are many people in today's world that suffer from some type of mental illness or disorder. Its is not limited to race, religion or culture, but reaches all levels of society. Some examples of these disorders are Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. People with mental illnesses have trouble functioning in society, family dysfunction, along with trouble affording facility treatments and medications.
To begin, people with mental disorders oftentimes have trouble functioning in society, because people do not understand what they are going through. Also, society has a way of pointing out that a person is different and make them feel alienated or demeaned. For example, people with bipolar disorder often have more work related problems than those who do not, but with treatment and medication they can easily adjust. According to PsychCentral “Bipolar disorder is a well-understood and readily treated by a combination of

medicines and psychotherapy.” opposed to schizophrenia which is “challenging to treat mainly because people with this disorder don’t function as well in society and have difficulty maintaining treatment regimen.” Another example from PsychCentral shows the difficulties people with schizophrenia go through. “People with this disorder often find it difficult to interact with others, and conduct normal life activities, such as holding down a job.”
Secondly, families that have mental disorders in the family are not only greatly affected by the illness, but often have trouble accepting that their family member is ill.

Parents of children with mental disorders will feel guilt as if it is their fault. According to Mark Moronell, MD “sometimes people with schizophrenia do not receive support from their families. Without treatment, there symptoms might become intense, and their odd behaviors isolate them from their families.” Because families sometimes do not support their family members it can lead to violent acts and devastation all just to gain attention. Unlike families dealing with schizophrenia, families dealing with bipolar disorder often come closer together, but first feel a variety of emotions while coming to terms with the illness. Accordinging to the Mood disorders association, “roles in the family often change due to illness in the family.” often causing distress with and conflict within the family such as anger of siblings possibly stress induced rebellion and conflict between

parents.
Lastly, we see that cost of treatment for both illnesses are significantly different. For example, it was said by Indian Journal of Psychiatry “Costs for bipolar disorder were somewhat higher than those for schizophrenia” American Journal of Managed Care states that “the total economic burden of bipolar disorder in the United States was $45 billion in 1991. Of that total, $7 billion was a result of direct costs of inpatient and outpatient care, as well as non treatment-related expenditures, such as costs of criminal justice.”, but as seen in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. “cost of schizophrenia to US society in 2013 was $155 billion - $44,773 per individual with the disease. The majority of the economic impact was from the lost work productivity of individuals with the disease and their caregivers: $117 billion.
In summary, we see that even though individuals with both mental disorders suffer in a lot of the same ways. In the first paragraph we see the difference in how each disorder functions in society, in the second paragraph we look at how families react differently toward the illness and how the individual deals with their reaction. Lastly we look at the most significant difference of all which is the cost of treatment for Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.