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Out of Your Mind: How Much Do You Know About Mental Health?

Q1. Roughly how many people in Britain will struggle with a mental health problem over the course of this year?




Answer: One in four British adults will experience a clinical mental health problem in any one year. However, there is still a (totally false) belief that mental health is somehow less serious or important than physical health, which makes sufferers more unlikely to ask for help. “I should be able to cope with this myself.”

Q2. Which of these mental health conditions is responsible for the most deaths?




Answer: Anorexia. Roughly one in five people who suffer from this eating disorder will die, but starvation and its attendant problems are not always the cause of death. Suicide accounts for about half of all these fatalities.

Q3. “People with depression are easy to identify, as they are so introverted and easily upset.”



Answer: False. Introversion, feelings of hopelessness, and poor self-belief can all be symptoms of depression, but many sufferers are extremely good at putting a brave face on it and trying to disguise their problems. The girl on your staircase who always seems so cheerful and active could just as easily be a sufferer as someone who feels unable to leave his room.

Q4. Which group has the highest level of suspected mental illness in Britain?




Answer: The prevalence of mental illness is thought to be much higher in minority ethnic communities than it is in the white British population – but sufferers from this particular group are much less likely to seek help or have their problems detected by a GP.

Q5. One in ten sufferers of anorexia nervosa are ______.




Answer: One in ten anorexia sufferers are male. It is possible that the figure is even higher than this, but the problem is not detected because the boys and men affected are reluctant to go to the doctor with a so-called ‘woman’s illness’.

Q6. Which of the following are NOT mental health difficulties? (Tick as many as appropriate.)




Answer: Epilepsy and Asperger’s Syndrome. Epilepsy is sometimes mistaken for a mental illness due to a common but false belief that all epileptics have hallucinations and that only mentally ill people can hallucinate. Asperger’s Syndrome is a form of autism that causes extreme difficulty with communication and social skills. Avoidance of social situations may be interpreted as a symptom of depression, and other ‘odd’ autistic behaviours are sometimes assumed to be signs of mental disturbance.

Q7. “Self-injury is a sure sign that somebody is thinking about committing suicide.”



Answer: False. Cutting, burning, inflicting bruises, ripping out hair, or causing harm to the body in other ways do not indicate that a person is feeling suicidal. Self-injury is often perceived by sufferers as a way to cope with life rather than a way to bring about death. These seemingly destructive behaviours may actually be preventing the person from doing something much worse.

Q8. “To be diagnosed with an eating disorder, a person must be either chronically over or underweight.”



Answer: False. Eating disorders aren’t defined solely by the numbers on the scale. Many people with extremely unhealthy and often dangerous eating habits are at a deceptively normal weight for their height. This is especially true of people with bulimia.

Q9. Which of the following high-profile Cambridge alumni suffered from mental health problems?




Answer: Sylvia Plath, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Hugh Laurie all struggled (and, in Laurie’s case, still struggle) with mental health difficulties, primarily severe depression.