Mental Health Issues In Early Adulthood

All people are different when it comes to their experience with addiction and mental illness. Some begin to experience mental health issues during childhood or adolescence and experiment with drugs and alcohol soon after, developing both an addiction problem and a serious mental illness at the same time. Others may seek out drugs and alcohol in an attempt to “self-medicate” a mental health issue that develops in early adulthood or that develops out of an injury or trauma later in life. Still others may first develop an addiction problem that grows so severe that it causes mental health issues or triggers the onset of symptoms that may otherwise have remained dormant.
Major Depressive Disorder (clinical depression) A brain disorder characterized by persistent depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life. (Mayo Clinic …show more content…
Diagnostic Criteria Major Depressive Disorder (clinical depression), you must have five or more of the following symptoms over a two-week period, most of the day, nearly every day. At least one of the symptoms must be either a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure. Signs and symptoms may include:

 Depressed mood, such as feeling sad, empty or tearful (in children and teens, a depressed mood can appear as constant irritability)
 Significantly reduced interest or feeling no pleasure in all or most activities
 Significant weight loss when not dieting, weight gain, or decrease or increase in appetite (in children, failure to gain weight as expected)
 Insomnia or increased desire to sleep
 Either restlessness or slowed behavior that can be observed by