What is mental health?
Mental health includes emotional, psychological and social well-being, and it matters at every stage of life. It works like physical health: it moves up and down, and there are things you can do to look after it. It shapes how you handle stress, how you relate to other people, and how you make decisions.
How many conditions are there?
More than most people expect. The list below is a map of the territory, not a diagnostic manual: it groups conditions the way clinicians usually talk about them, so that a name you have heard has somewhere to sit. Only a clinician can say whether any of it applies to a particular person.
Psychotic disorders
- Schizophrenia
- Schizoaffective disorder
- Schizophreniform disorder
- Brief psychotic disorder
- Delusional disorder
- Substance-induced psychotic disorder
- Psychotic disorder due to another medical condition
Mood disorders
- Major depressive disorder
- Bipolar I disorder
- Bipolar II disorder
- Cyclothymic disorder
- Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder
- Persistent depressive disorder
- Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
- Seasonal affective disorder
- Postpartum depression
Anxiety disorders
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Social anxiety disorder
- Separation anxiety disorder
- Specific phobias
- Panic disorder
Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Body dysmorphic disorder
- Hoarding disorder
- Trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder)
- Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder
Trauma and stressor-related disorders
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Acute stress disorder
- Reactive attachment disorder
- Disinhibited social engagement disorder
- Adjustment disorders
Personality disorders
- Paranoid personality disorder
- Schizoid personality disorder
- Schizotypal personality disorder
- Antisocial personality disorder
- Borderline personality disorder
- Histrionic personality disorder
- Narcissistic personality disorder
- Avoidant personality disorder
- Dependent personality disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
Eating disorders
- Anorexia nervosa
- Bulimia nervosa
- Binge eating disorder
- Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder
- Pica
- Rumination disorder
- Other specified feeding or eating disorder
Neurodevelopmental disorders
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Intellectual developmental disorder and global developmental delay
- Communication disorders, including language disorder, speech sound disorder and childhood-onset fluency disorder (stuttering)
- Social (pragmatic) communication disorder
- Motor disorders, including developmental coordination disorder, stereotypic movement disorder and tic disorders such as Tourette's syndrome
Learning disorders
- Dyslexia (reading)
- Dysgraphia (writing)
- Dyscalculia (mathematics)
- Auditory processing disorder
- Language processing disorder
- Nonverbal learning disability
- Visual perceptual and visual motor deficit
Substance use disorders
- Alcohol use disorder
- Opioid use disorder
- Cannabis use disorder
- Tobacco use disorder
- Stimulant use disorder
- Sedative, hypnotic or anxiolytic use disorder
- Hallucinogen use disorder
The numbers, as NIMH published them in 2021
- In 2019 an estimated 51.5 million US adults aged 18 or older had any mental illness — 20.6% of all US adults.
- Prevalence was higher among females (24.5%) than males (16.3%).
- Young adults aged 18 to 25 had the highest prevalence (29.4%), compared with 25.0% of adults aged 26 to 49 and 14.1% of adults aged 50 and over.
- Prevalence was highest among adults reporting two or more races (31.7%), then White adults (22.2%), and lowest among Asian adults (14.4%).
Watch
We All Have Mental Health — an animation from the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, made for young people aged 11 to 14, on what mental health means and how to look after it.
Articles about mental health
5 ways to support a loved one with a mental illness
“Chances are that you know someone who has a mental health condition. It could be a friend, family member, coworker or someone in your faith community. Even with these staggering numbers, we as a society do not receive enough formal education on talking about mental health issues or how to support a friend with a mental health issue.”
Read the article (The Mighty)
Busting 5 mental health myths
“As someone who has been actively engaged in the mental health community on social media for the past few years, I have come across an alarming amount of misconceptions about mental health conditions. Many of these myths either minimize conditions… Others falsely stereotype entire populations.”
Read the article (The Mighty)
More from Sophrosyne
- Brain Tour — what each part of the brain does.
- Mental health timeline — how treatment has changed.
- Self-care — things you can try yourself.
Sources
- SAMHSA — What is mental health? (the definition; the cited mentalhealth.gov page now redirects here — checked September 2026)
- National Institute of Mental Health — Mental illness statistics (the numbers; the 2021 figures verified against the archived copy of this page from 15 May 2021, the current figure fetched September 2026)
- Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families — We All Have Mental Health (the animation)
- The Mighty — 5 ways to support a loved one with a mental illness by Allie Curtis
- The Mighty — Busting 5 mental health myths by Anja Burcak