Mental Illness Resources

What is Mental Illness?
Mental illness is a disease caused by an imbalance in the brain’s chemicals that regulate how much a person thinks and feels. While brain diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder are as common as heart disease, they continue to be the most misunderstood of all illnesses. People with mental illness do not have control over their illness any more than a person with diabetes can control their insulin level.

Severe mental illnesses include such disorders as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and other persistent mental illnesses that affect the brain. These disorders can profoundly disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, moods, ability to relate to others and capacity for coping with the demands of life.

Mental illnesses can affect persons of any age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or income. Mental illnesses are not the result of personal weakness, lack of character, or poor upbringing.

Mental illnesses are treatable.

Most people with serious mental illness need medication to help control symptoms, but many also rely on supportive counseling, vocational rehabilitation, case management, assistance with housing, income assistance, self-help groups, and other community services in order to achieve their highest level of recovery. Lifenet’s comprehensive approach to treatment provides these services to help control the symptoms of mental illness and to assist with a person’s recovery.

For More Information, please visit these sites:

Depression:
NIMH Depression
www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/depressionmenu.cfm

Bipolar Disorder:
NIMH Bipolar
www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/bipolarmenu.cfm

Schizophrenia:
NIMH Schizophrenia
www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/schizophreniamenu.cfm

Mental Health Information and Resources:
Mental Health America of Greater Dallas
http:
www.mhadallas.org

Mental Health Advocacy:
Advocacy, Inc.
www.advocacyinc.org/index.cfm

NAMI:
www.nami.org/

Medications:
Intelihealth
www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/8271/8282/33022.html?d=dmtContent

NIMH medication:
www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/medicate.cfm

Substance Abuse / Chemical Dependency:
www.health.org/

Texas Department of State Health Services:
www.dshs.state.tx.us/sa/default.shtm

North Texas Legal Services:
www.lanwt.org