Category D includes the most common kinds of problems. These disorders usually render a person unable to care for themselves. These people may require extensive psychiatric hospitalization, or they may respond well to outpatient psychotropic medications. Without proper treatment, they may wander the streets as homeless persons. In these cases the substance abuse problem must be eliminated before the symptoms can be addressed.
Emotional disorders are the most common of all.
Such movie and television characters may portray a variety of symptoms of emotional disorders, such as constant feelings of inferiority, an obsessive fear of germs or illness, constant fears of having cancer, a heart attack, or some other dread disease, or fears of elevators or enclosed places. Excessive and persistent fears of some form of disease is called hypochondriasis , from which the term hypochondriac is derived. Excessive, persistent and repetitive thoughts are called obsessions. Unreasonable repetitive actions such as constantly checking and rechecking that the gas is off, or that the door is locked are called compulsions . Often these kinds of symptoms occur in combinations rather than distinct forms.