· Psychiatry is ...
· If you need help
· What is a   psychiatrist?
· Mental Illness:   Warning Signs
· Psychiatric   Treatments

A person displaying one or more of these warning signs should be evaluated by a psychiatrist or another physician as soon as possible:

• Marked change in personality or behavior
  
• Inability to cope with problems of daily life
  
• Strange, unrealistic ideas (delusions) or hallucinations (seeing, hearing, smelling)
  
• Excessive anxiety or suspiciousness
  
• Prolonged or excessive sadness or apathy (not caring)
  
• Marked changes in eating or sleeping habits, or in energy levels and speed of thinking or talking
  
• Thinking or talking about suicide
  
• Extreme or alternating "highs" and "lows" of mood
  
• Abuse of alcohol or drugs
  
• Excessive anger, hostility or violent behavior
  
• Excessive fear of people, places or events
  
• Difficulty with memory and concentration
  

Additional symtoms in children may include:

• Regressing to an earlier stage of development (toilet training reversal, increased finger sucking, or crying)
  
• Refusal to go to school, talk or play with friends and family, spending excessive time alone or emotionally withdrawn
  
• Unusually oppositional, irritable, or impulsive behavior, especially if potentially dangerous (i.e. destructive, violent, or accident-prone)
  
• New onset or increased tendency to lie or tell fantastic stories to cover failures and fears, after the age of 5 or 6
  
• Reluctance to talk about emotional or physical hurts, injuries
  
• Bullying, stealing, fighting, or other anti-social behavior especially after age of 3 of 4
  
• Unexplained drop in performance