What Mental Illness Do I Have?

What mental Illness do I have? When people are experiencing difficulties that go beyond normal stress, when they find relationships crumbling, when they have problems working or doing the daily tasks of life, and when they simply don't feel like themselves anymore, they often begin to suspect that they're "going crazy" or "losing their minds." They suspect that they have a mental illness, and they often implore, "Do I have a mental illness? If so, what mental illness do I have?"

To answer this question with certainty, and to get the right kind of mental health help and treatment, it's important to see a doctor, mental health counselor or other mental health care provider who will start by talking with you about your symptoms and, if necessary, move onto mental illness diagnosis tests. You don't have to wait for an appointment, though, to begin to find some answers, albeit informal ones. In fact, doing so can help give you the information you need to better talk to a professional.

Answering What Mental Illness Do I Have?

Informal psychological tests can help you organize your mental illness symptoms and narrow them down a bit. That way, rather than be stuck with a tangled jumble of distress, you can funnel your symptoms into categories that might point the way to one or more possible mental illness diagnoses.

There are a number of self-assessments available for people. Tests, quizzes, questionnaires, rating scales, and mental health assessment and screening tools all help people refine the way people think about what they're dealing with as well as provide insight into the question, "What mental illness do I have?" Using these tools increases understanding of mental illness symptoms and can facilitate communication between you and a mental health practitioner.

HealthyPlace.com has a wide variety of online psychological tests, quizzes, and other informal assessments to help people. These tools are not for diagnosing mental illness, as the only person who can diagnose is a doctor or other professional. Instead, these assessments are there for people to complete in order to gain insight into the various symptoms of mental disorders as well as into themselves.

Visit our Psychological Tests page to find a list of the tests and quizzes in each of these mental health categories:

• Abuse Tests
• Addiction Tests
• Adult ADHD Tests
• Anxiety Disorder Tests
• Bipolar Disorder Tests
• Depression Tests
• Eating Disorder Tests
• Parenting Test-Compassion Fatigue Test
• Personality Disorders Tests
• Sleep Disorders Tests
• Schizophrenia Screening Test

Take a test here: Psychological Tests

Discovery: What Mental Illness Do I Have?

Finding an answer to the question, "What mental illness do I have?" is a process of discovery. It's a chance to search yourself and your life and look for evidence. It can be difficult for anyone to separate what's going on in the head from what is really happening in life (our thoughts like to play tricks on us and make us misinterpret things). Mental illness makes this challenge worse. Therefore, discovering a lot about yourself and your surroundings can help you determine what mental illness might apply to you.

In your journey of self-discovery, the key is to look for patterns rather than isolated problems and incidents.

• How do you describe the problems?
• Where do problems happen? Be specific.
• When do the difficulties happen (at home, school, work, during certain events, days of the week, etc.?)
• With whom to the problems happen?
• How long has this problem been happening?
• What patterns do you see in your thoughts? Feelings? Behaviors?
• What current stressors are you dealing with?

The more questions you can answer—even go beyond this list—and the more informal quizzes and tests you do from reputable sources like HealthyPlace.com, the closer you'll be to answering the question, "What mental illness do I have?" Then take this information and share it with your doctor or a mental health professional to get an authentic diagnosis.