Neurosis, more recently known as anxiety order, is the most common of all mental disorders, generally believed to affect more than 10% of the population. In terms of age demographics, first onset usually occurs in the range from late adolescence through the late forties.
The term neurosis has been in circulation for quite some time, but in popular use, it has often been lumped together with psychosis, a more severe mental disorder. Properly defined, neurosis is the generic term for a mental and/or physical dysfunction with primarily psychological causes.
In other words, neurosis is not an organic disease. Rather, it can be thought of as a condition in which sufferers respond in a similar way as their healthy counterparts to the ordinary situations they experience, but with exaggerated emotional intensity. For example, anyone might feel a degree of disgust toward objects they consider dirty or contaminated, but a neurotic person may take the feeling to such an extreme that they wash their hands countless times a day in an attempt to maintain cleanliness, or spend hours bathing before they can be satisfied they are clean. Thoughts of contamination and efforts to deal with the thoughts continually penetrate and impact their everyday existence.
Such an extreme aversion to contamination is a neurosis known as mysophobia, the morbid fear of dirt and germs.
Why do people develop neuroses?
Types of neurosis
- Social anxiety (social phobia)
- Panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Dysthymia (depressive neurosis)
- Dissociative disorder (hysterical neurosis)
- Somatoform disorder
- Depersonalization disorder (depersonalization neurosis)