Psychiatry is an important field of medicine. This can be evidenced by the fact that an internship in this field is - in addition to work in departments such as internal medicine or gynaecology - one of the components of a doctor's postgraduate training. The general public's knowledge of mental illnesses and disorders unfortunately seems to be quite low: "nut", "nut" are some of the milder terms for patients in psychiatric institutions. What, then, are mental illnesses and should each of them be so feared?