Psychiatry & Psychology | By May 22, 2006 | By Elise StobbecloseElise Stobbe Name: Elise Stobbe
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Impaired Awareness of Mental Illness

There are about six million severely mentally ill people in the United States. About half of these severely mentally ill do not know they are ill. (1) (Severe mental illness includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and a few other diagnoses). There is a medical term for this condition: anosognosia, an impaired awareness of one’s own disturbed mental condition, despite evidence to the contrary. An ill person may claim that everything is fine, when it is not. This impaired awareness of mental illness is caused by damage to specific parts of the brain. Neurocognitive deficits, or symptoms of a brain dysfunction, are part of the mental illness. People with anosognosia do not recognize that hallucinations, mania, delusions, paranoia or other symptoms of mental illness are, in fact, mental illness. Read more →