Can mental illness be cured?

Mental illness is often manifested by symptoms such as sudden personality changes, emotional disorders, strange behaviors, sensitivity and suspicion, memory disorders, and volitional and behavioral disorders. Many patients and their families are very worried. Can mental illness be cured? This is the most concerned issue. Next, let us understand mental illness and treatment in more detail. We must establish firm confidence and actively cooperate with doctors for examination and treatment. Treatment requires the result of joint efforts.

Most functional mental disorders can!

Whenever I introduce myself to people as a psychiatrist, many people ask with a puzzled look on their faces: “Can mental illness… be cured?” When people refer to mental illness, they are mostly referring to schizophrenia.

. At this time, I will answer with confidence: "Most patients can be cured."

Indeed, among hospitalized schizophrenia patients, more than 60% can achieve clinical cure, and the treatment effect is better for patients with first-time attack. So why do people still have such doubts? This is mainly because doctors and ordinary people have different standards for judging whether a patient is well or not. Doctors judge the efficacy of the treatment from a medical perspective. Once the symptoms disappear and self-awareness is restored, the disease is considered cured. Ordinary people believe that a mentally ill person can only be considered cured if he or she lives and works like a normal person. The effectiveness of mental illness treatment is questionable because:

1. The side effects of the drug make the patient appear dull and slow;

2. The disease is prone to relapse, and in fact the relapse rate of mental illness is quite high;

3. Due to the influence of various factors , although the patient has achieved clinical recovery, he or she is still unable to participate in normal interpersonal communication and study and work. So, while doctors consider many patients cured, others still feel there is "something wrong" with them.

It is undeniable that the current treatment effect of schizophrenia is indeed unsatisfactory, and the side effects of antipsychotic drugs have become a major problem hindering the recovery of patients. However, we should also see the complexity of psychiatric treatment. The factors that affect the efficacy are not simply doctors and drugs, but also include family members and various social factors. There are many factors other than drug treatment that doctors cannot control. Therefore, we cannot deny the achievements of psychiatry just because we are not satisfied with the current treatment results, and we cannot say that "mental illness cannot be cured." In the past three or four decades, many new drugs for treating mental illness have been used in clinical practice and have achieved good results. Everything has two sides, and psychiatry is always evolving. We can believe that there will be more and more treatments for mental illness and the results will get better and better. While medical staff are working tirelessly towards this goal, we also sincerely hope that the patients' families and all sectors of society will care about and help with the treatment of mental illness, and do our part for mental patients.