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Addiction
Addiction sufferers repeatedly engage in certain behaviors to achieve satisfaction, even though this has already damaged various aspects of their lives, and continues uncontrollably and intensifies over time. Common addictive behaviors include: alcoholism, use of soft drugs or stimulants, sexual addiction, internet addiction, gambling, and binge eating.
Causes:
- The brain's self-reward mechanism is damaged.
- Poor interpersonal relationships or lack of support network
- Having experienced traumatic or stressful events that have affected their resilience.
- Deviations in thought and behavior
- Affected by other emotional issues
Symptoms:
- Excessive repetition of certain behaviors, which cannot be controlled even with attempts.
- Spending too much time repeating certain behaviors disrupts work and social life.
Even though their health and emotions have been affected by repetitive sexual behavior, they still cannot stop.
- Focusing solely on the reward aspect of addictive behaviors
- Blaming other things for the damage caused by repetition.
- Increased anxiety
- Decreased stress resistance
treatment:
- Psychotherapy: Assisting patients in managing their cravings for addictive behaviors and encouraging family members to participate and support them to improve effectiveness.
- Patient self-help organizations: Increase patients' motivation to quit addiction through sharing their experiences as patients and those recovering.
- Detoxification treatment: Using a gradual approach, patients are helped to reduce the frequency of their addictive behaviors, assisting in managing detoxification symptoms.
Psychosomatic
Psychosomatic disorders refer to persistent physical discomfort, often involving multiple organs, but not solely caused by physiological problems. Rather, they are a result of the interplay of physiological, psychological, emotional, and environmental factors. Because few people associate physical discomfort with emotions, psychosomatic disorders are often overlooked.
Causes:
Research has found that emotions can affect the body's response to pain and physical discomfort; therefore, emotional distress can also lead to various physical discomforts.
Excessive life stress and emotional distress can lead to an imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain that regulate various psychological and physiological functions, such as serotonin receptors, norepinephrine, and dopamine transmission, resulting in impaired physical and mental function.
Symptoms:
- Symptoms of psychosomatic disorders can include not only pain, but also problems with the digestive, nervous, and even reproductive systems.
- Nervous system: headache, dizziness, numbness in hands and feet, muscle weakness
- Otolaryngology: A foreign body sensation in the throat, tinnitus.
- Cardiopulmonary system: palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing
- Digestive system: stomach pain, nausea, bloating, constipation, diarrhea
- Musculoskeletal system: tension headaches, generalized muscle pain
- Urinary system: Frequent urination, difficulty urinating
- Reproductive system: erectile dysfunction, painful intercourse
- Pain symptoms: back pain, headache, joint pain
treatment:
- Psychotherapy: Primarily cognitive behavioral therapy, which can reduce the frequency and severity of physical and mental discomfort.
- Medication: Because psychosomatic disorders are associated with depression and anxiety, prescription antidepressants can also help alleviate symptoms.
Cognitive Disorder
1. Alzheimer's disease
2. Vascular cognitive impairment
3. The third category is relatively rare, accounting for about 5% of all cognitive impairments. This includes traumatic, infectious, Lewy body disease, frontal temporal cognitive impairment, Pick's disease, Huntington's disease, alcoholism, inflammation, syphilis, and so on.
Cognitive impairment, also known as dementia or neurodegeneration, causes memory decline, but unlike general memory loss due to aging, it causes rapid degeneration of brain cells. In addition to impairing memory in the early stages of the disease, it gradually damages other brain functions, leading to inability to take care of oneself or perform daily tasks, difficulty communicating, and drastic changes in mood and personality.
Causes and symptoms:
Cognitive impairment can be broadly classified into three categories based on its cause, with Alzheimer's disease being the most common, accounting for two-thirds of all cognitive impairment cases, followed by vascular dementia, which accounts for about 20% of patients.
Alzheimer's disease involves the accumulation of plaques in the brain, leading to the death of brain cells near the plaques and interfering with the transmission of information between nerve cells. Initially, patients may have difficulty remembering recent events, experience personality changes, exhibit depressive tendencies, and struggle to cope with or adapt to life changes. As memory decline worsens, patients not only repeatedly ask the same questions but also begin to forget the names of close friends and family and become irritable. Finally, the disease affects limb coordination, sometimes confining patients to bed, and cognitive decline can lead to an inability to respond to external stimuli.
Vascular cognitive impairment: caused by blockage of the arteries that supply blood to the brain, resulting in strokes of varying degrees, damaging brain cells in certain areas, and the symptoms vary depending on the affected area.
The third category is relatively rare , accounting for about 5% of all cognitive impairments. This includes traumatic, infectious, Lewy body disease, frontal temporal cognitive impairment, Pick's disease, Huntington's disease, alcoholism, inflammation, syphilis, and so on.
Treatment methods:
- Drug treatment:
Cholinesterase inhibitors are the most commonly prescribed medication. They promote the transmission of nerve signals, thus slowing the decline in memory and cognitive abilities. Memantine, a medication for attention deficit disorder, blocks the damage caused by glutamate released from the damaged brain and is also used to treat Alzheimer's disease. In addition, some antidepressants and sedatives are also used to relieve patients' symptoms.
- Non-pharmacological treatment:
Examples include cognitive training, reality-oriented therapy (teaching and encouraging patients to record daily life data in different ways), reminiscence therapy (encouraging patients to recall and share past events to improve their confidence and maintain their expressive abilities), and multisensory therapy (training patients to apply various cognitive skills through different activities), etc.