Psych: related terms

Compiled by: AJ Tapia

Affect
The outward manifestation of a persons feelings, tone or mood. Affect and emotions
are commonly used interchangeable.

Agitation
Excessive motor activity, usually purposeless and associated with internal tension.
Examples: inability to sit still, pacing, wringing of hands, or pulling of clothing.

Akathisia
Motor restlessness ranging from a feeling of inner disquiet, often localized in the
muscles, to inability to sit still or lie quietly, a side effect of some antipsychotic
drugs.

Akinesia
A side effect of the antipsychotic drugs characterized by a general lack of motor
movement in the patient, as well as a slowing down of speech and responsiveness.

Ambivalence
The coexistence of contradictory emotions, attitudes, ideas, or desires with respect
to a particular person, object, or situation. Suggests psychopathology only when
present in an extreme form.

Anhedonia
Loss of interest and/or pleasure in usual activities associated with depression.

Anxiety
Apprehension, tension or uneasiness that stems from the anticipation of a danger,
whose source is largely unknown. Primarily of intrapsychic origin. (top)

Catatonia
Immobility with muscular rigidity or inflexibility and at times excitability most often
seen in schizophrenia.

Circumstantiality
In conversation, the use of excessive and irrelevant detail in describing simple
events, the speaker eventually reaching his goal only after many digressions.

Clang Association
In thinking, the association of words by sound rather than meaning, after resulting
in nonsensical rhymes and puns.
Cognitive
Refers to the mental process of comprehension, judgement, memory, and
reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes.

Compulsion
An insistent, repetitive, intrusive and unwanted urge to perform an act that is
contrary to one's ordinary wishes and standard.

Confabulation
Fabrication of facts or events in response to questions about events that are not
recalled because of memory impairment.

Conflict
A mental struggle that arises from the simultaneous operation of opposing
impulses, drives external or internal demands (intra psychic when the conflict is
between internal forces - extra psychic when the conflict is between self and the
environment.

Confusion
Disturbed orientation in respect to time, place or person.

Countertransference
The therapist's partly unconscious or conscious emotional reactions to the patient.
(top)

Defense Mechanisms
Patterns of feelings, thoughts, or behaviors that arc relatively involuntary and arise
in response to perceptions of psychic danger to alleviate the conflicts or stressors
that give rise to anxiety. May be either maladaptive or adaptive, depending on their
severity, their inflexibility, arid the context in which they occur. Some common
defense mechanisms arc compensation, conversion, denial, displacement,
dissociation, intellectualization, repression, projection, somatization, suppression,
undoing, splitting, idealization, reaction formation.

Delirium
A clouding of consciousness, marked by reduced ability to focus on and sustain
attention to environmental stimuli. Usually of abrupt onset, the syndrome develops
over a short period of time with symptoms fluctuating in severity over the course of
a day. Perceptual disturbance, incoherent speech, sleep-wake disturbance,
emotional liability, disorientation and memory impairment may be present.
Condition is reversible except when followed by dementia or death.

Delirium tremors
An acute and sometimes fatal brain disorder caused by total or partial withdrawal
from excessive alcohol intake. Usually develops in 24 to 96 hours after cessation of
drinking. Symptoms include fever, tremors, ataxia, and sometimes convulsions,
frightening illusions, delusions, and hallucinations.

Delusion
A firm, fixed idea not amenable to rational explanation and maintained despite
objective evidence to the contrary. Some types of common delusions are delusions
of being controlled, delusions of grandeur, delusions or persecution and somatic
delusions.

Dementia
A deterioration of intellectual abilities of sufficient severity to interfere with social or
occupational functioning. Dementia may follow a progressive, static, or remitting
course depending on the underlying etiology. Memory disturbance is the most
prominent symptom. In addition there is impairment of abstract thinking,
judgement, impulse control, and/or personality change.

Depersonalization
An alteration in the perception or experience of the self so that the feelings of one's
own reality is temporarily lost; a sense of unreality.

Dystonia
Acute tonic muscular spasms, often of the tongue, jaw, eyes and neck but
sometimes of the whole body. Reactions may come on quickly and dramatically, A
treatable side effect of antipsychotic drugs.

Echolalia
Repetition (echoing) of words or phrases of others.

Echopraxia
The pathological repetition by imitation of the movements of another person.

Flight of Ideas
A nearly continuous flow or accelerated speech with abrupt changes from topic to
topic, usually based on understandable associations, distracting stimuli, or plays on
words.

Grandiosity
An inflated appraisal of one's worth, power knowledge, importance, or identity.

Hallucinations
A sensory impression in the absence of any external stimuli; can arise in respect to
any sensory modality - visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile or gustatory.
Hypomania
Abnormality of mood but even normal euphoria and mania. Characterized by
optimism, pressure of speech and activity, and decreased need for sleep. Some
people have increased creativity while others demonstrate poor judgment and
irritability.

Ideas of influence
The conviction that one's behavior, including one's thoughts is being influenced in
some way by an external agency, when in fact it is not.

Ideas of reference
The interpretation of external events, especially the actions and statements of other
people, as having reference to one's self when in fact they do not.

Loose Associations
Thinking that is overgeneralized, diffuse, and vague with only a tenuous connection
between one thought and the next.

Mania
A mood disorder characterized by excessive elation, hyperactivity, agitation,- and
accelerated thinking and speaking - sometimes manifested as flight of ideas. Mania
is seen in major affective disorders and in some organic mental disorders.

Mood
A pervasive and sustained emotion that in the extreme markedly colors one's
perception of the world. ' Examples of mood include depression, elation, and anger.

Obsession
A persistent, unwanted idea or impulse that can not be eliminated by logic or
reasoning. (top)

Panic Attacks
: Sudden onset of intense apprehension, fearfulness, or terror - is accompanied by
physiological changes.

Paranoid Ideation
Suspiciousness or nondelusional belief that one is being harassed, persecuted, or
unfairly treated.
Parkinson's Syndrome
A treatable syndrome of side effects from antipsychotic medication which appear
after one or two weeks and that is characterized by resting tremor, muscle rigidity,
including a mask-like face; slow motor movement, and a stooped, shuffling gait.
Preservation
The emission of the same verbal or motor response again and again to varied
stimuli, despite the parson's effort to move on.

Phobia
An obsessive, persistent, unrealistic intense fear of an object or situation.

Posturing
Maintaining an unusual or awkward posture for a considerable amount of time.

Poverty of Thought
Few verbal communications or ones that convey little information because of
vagueness, empty repetitions, or stereotyped or obscure phrases.

Pseudodementia
Clinical features resembling a dementia that are not due to organic brain
dysfunction or disease.

Psychomotor Agitation
Excessive motor activity associated with a feeling of inner tension, the activity is
usually non productive and repetitious.

Psychomotor Retardation
Visible generalized slowing down of physical reactions, movements, and speech.

Psychosis
A major mental disorder of organic or emotional origin in which a person's ability to
think, respond emotionally, remember, communicate, interpret reality, and behave
appropriately is sufficiently impaired so as to interfere grossly with the capacity to
meet the ordinary demands of life. Often characterized by regressive behavior,
inappropriate mood, diminished impulse control, and such abnormal mental content
as delusions and hallucinations.

Psychosomatic
The constant and inseparable interaction of the psyche (mind) and the soma (body).
Commonly used to refer to illnesses in which the manifestations are primarily
physical with at least a partial emotional etiology. (top)

Tangential
In conversation, digressions that divert the speaker from his goal, which he never
reaches; to be distinguished from circumstantial in which the goal is eventually
reached.

Tardive Dyskinesia
Literally 'late appearing abnormal movements;' a variable complex of choreiform or
athetoid movements developing in patients exposed to antipsychotic drugs. Typical
movements include tongue-writhing or protrusion, chewing, lip-puckcring,
choreiform finger movements, toe and ankle movements, leg-jiggling, or
movements of neck, trunk, and pelvis.

Thought Blocking
A sudden obstruction or interruption in the train of thought or speech, which the
person is unable to complete.

Thought Broadcasting
A symptom of psychosis in which the patient believes that thoughts are broadcast
outside the head so that other persons can actually hear them.

Thought insertion
The patient's belief that thoughts that are not the patient's own Can be inserted into
his mind.

Thought Withdrawal
An interruption in the train of thought perceived by tile person as someone
removing or taking away his thoughts.

Transference
The unconscious assignment to others of feelings and attitudes that were originally
associated with important figures (parents, siblings, etc.) in one's early life. The
transference may be negative or positive.