Behavioral Science - General Terms
Terms
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- Axis I
- Major Psychiatric Disorders that tend to relapse and remit
- Axis II
- Ongoing, chronic disorders that stay relatively constant and have onset in childhood or early adulthood (mental retardation and personality disorders)
- Axis III
- Any medical condition.
- Axis IV
- Stressors in the individual's life (psychosocial and environmental)
- Axis V
- Global Assessment of Functioning Score (1-100 severity/impairment caused by psychiatric disorder)
- Echopraxia
- Pathological imitation of mvmts of one person by another
- Catalepsy
- general term for an immobile position that is constantly maintained
- Catatonic stupor
- markedly slowed motor activity, often to point of immobility and seeming unawareness of surroundings
- Waxy flexibility
- condition of a person who can be molded into a position that is then maintained (if move their limb, it feels like wax)
- Akinesia
- lack of physical movement, as in extreme immobility of catatonic schizophrenia
- Cataplexy
- temporary loss of muscle tone and weakness precipitated by a variety of emotional states
- Stereotypy
- repetitive fixed pattern of physical action or speech
- Mannerism
- ingrained, habitual involuntary movement
- Psychomotor agitation
- excessive motor and cognitive overactivity, usual nonproductive and in response to internal tension
- Tic
- involuntary, spasmodic motor movement
- Akathisia
- subjective feeling of muscular tension secondary to antipsychotic or other meds, can cause restlessness, pacing, repeated sitting/standing, can be mistaken for agitation
- Ataxia
- failure of muscle coordination, irregularity of muscle action
- Psychomotor retardation
- decreased motor/cognitive activity, visible slowing of thought, speech and mvmt.
- Dyskinesia
- difficulty in performing voluntary mvnts, as in extrapyramidal disorders
- Bradykinesia
- slowness of motor activity with a decrease in normal spontaneous mvmt
- Chorea
- random and involuntary quick, jerky, purposeless mvmts
- Dystonia
- slow, sustained contractions of trunk/limbs, seen in med induced dystonia
- Mood
- pervasive and sustained emotion, subjectively experienced and reported by patient and observed by others
- Dysphoric mood
- unpleasant, somewhat sad mood
- Euthymic mood
- ml range of mood, implies absence of depressed or elevated mood
- Expansive mood
- expression of feelings without restraint, frequently with overestimation of their significance or importance
- Irritable mood
- state in which person is easily annoyed and provoked to anger
- Labile mood
- (mood swings) oscillations between eupohria, depression, or anxiety
- Elevated mood
- air of confidence and enjoyment, a mood more cheerful than usual
- Ecstacy
- feeling of intense happiness
- Depression
- pathological feeling of sadness
- Anhedonia
- loss of interest and withdrawl from all regular and pleasurable activities, often associated with depression
- Grief
- sadness appropriate to a real loss
- Alexithymia
- a person's difficulty in describing or being aware of emotions or mood
- Elation
- feelings of joy, eupohria, triumph, intense self satisfaction, or optimism
- Anxiety
- feeling of apprehension caused by and in anticipation of danger, which may be internal or external
- Affect
- observed expression of emotion, possibly inconsistent with patient's description of emotion
- Appropriate affect
- emotional tone is in harmony with accompanying idea, thought or speech; also broad/full affect in which full range of emotions is appropriately expressed
- Inappropriate affect
- disharmony between emotional feeling tone and the idea, thought, or speech accompanying it
- Blunted affect
- disturbance in affect manifsted by a severe reduction in the intensity or externalized feeling tone
- Restricted or Constricted affect
-
reduction in the intensity of externailzed feeling tone
constricted > blunted > flat - Flat affect
- absence or near absence of any signs of affective expression; voice monotonous, face immobile
- Labile affect
- rapid and abrupt changes in emotional feeling tone, unrelated to external stimuli
- Speech
- ideas, thoughts, feelings as expressed through language; communication through use of words and language
- Pressured speech
- rapid speech that is increased in amount and difficult to interrupt
- Logorrhea
- copious, coherent, logical speech
- Poverty of speech
- restriction in the amount of speech used, replies may be monosyllabic
- Nonspontaneous speech
- verbal responses given only when asked or spoken to directly, no self initiation of speech
- Poverty of content of speech
- speech is adequate in amount, but conveys little info because of vagueness, emptiness, or stereotyped phrases
- Dysprosody
- loss of normal melody of speech (prosody)
- Dysarthria
- difficulty in articulation, not in word finding or grammar
- Perception
- process of transferring physical stimulation into psychological info; mental process by which sensory stimuli brought into awareness
- Hallucination
- false sensory perception not associated with real external stimuli; may or may not have delusional interpretation
- Hypnagogic hallucination
- false sensory perception occurs while falling asleep; generally considered non pathological
- Hypnopompic hallucination
- false perception occurring while awakening from sleep (popping out of bed); generally considered non pathological
- Auditory hallucinations
- false perception of sound, usually voices but also other noises such as music; most common hallucination in psychiatric disorders
- Visual hallucination
- False perception involving sight: formed images and unformed images; most common in medically related disorders
- Olfactory hallucinations
- false perception of smell; most commonly related to med disorders such as pre-ictus of seizures
- Gustatory hallucination
- False perception of taste, usually unpleasant, commonly related to med disorders, such as pre-ictus of seizures
- Somatic hallucination
- False sense of things occuring in body, most often visceral in origin
- Mood congruent hallucination
- content is consistent with either a manic or depressed mood
- Mood incongruent hallucination
- content is not consistent with either a depressed or manic mood
- Command hallucinations
- false perception of orders that a person may feel obliged to obey or unable to resist (often dangerous)
- Illusion
- misperception or misinterpretation of real external sensory stimuli
- Dissociation
- defense mechanism involving segregation of any group of mental or behavioral processes from the rest of the person's psychic activity
- Macropsia
- state in which objects seem larger than they are
- Micropsia
-
state in which objects seem smaller than the are
can be associated with partial cx sz - Depersonalization
- a person's subjective sense of being unreal, strange, or unfamiliar
- Derealization
- subjective sense that the environment is strange or unreal; feeling of changed reality
- Fugue
- taking on a new identity with amnesia for the old identity; often involves travel or wandering to new environments
- Thoughts
- Goal directed flow of ideas, symbols, associations initiated by a problem or task and leading towards a reality oriented conclusion
- Thought process
- flow of one idea to another in a logical process
- Neologism
- new word created by a patient, often combining syllables of other words; idiosyncratic and pathological
- Word salad
- Incoherent mixture of words and phrases
- Circumstantiality
- Indirect speech that is delayed inreaching point, but eventually gets from original pt to desired goal; char by overinclusion of details and parenthetical remarks
- Tangentiality
- Inability to have goal directed associationso fo thought; never gets from desired point to goal
- Verbigeration
- meaningless repetition of specific words or phrases (man at train stop)
- Perseveration
- Persisting response to a previous stimulus after new stim has been presented; often associated with cog disorders
- Echolalia
- pathological repeating of words/phrases of one person and another
- Loosening of associations
- flow of thought in which ideas shift from one to another in a completely unrelated way; when severe, speech may be incoherent
- Derailment
- gradual or sudden deviation in train of thought with blocking
- Blocking
- abrupt interruption in train of thinking before thought/idea is finished; after brief pause no recall of what was being said
- Flight of ideas
- rapid continuous verbilazations or plays on words produce constant shifting; ideas tend to be connected but too fast for listener to comprehend
- Clang association
- association of words similar in sound but not in meaning; no logical connection; may involve rhyming and punning
- Thought content
- realtiy drawn conclusions arising in thoughts
- Overvalued idea
- unreasonable, sustained false belief maintained less firmly than a delusion
- Delusion
- fixed false belief, based on incorrect inference about external reality, not consistent with intelligence/cultural background, can't be corrected by reasoning
- Bizarre delusion
- absurd, totally implausible, strange belief (aliens in brain)
- Mood congruent delusions
- delusion with mood appropriate content
- Mood incongruent delusion
- delusions with content that has no association to mood
- Nihilistic delusion
- false feeling that self, others, or world is coming to an end
- Delusion of poverty
- false belief that he/she is destitute or will be deprived of all material posessions
- Somatic delusion
- false belief involving functioning of body (inside is rotting/melting)
- Paranoid delusion
- includes persecutory delusions and delusions of reference, control and grandeur
- Delusions of persecution
- false belief that he/she is being harassed, cheated, or persecuted
- Delusion of grandeur
- exaggerated conception of his/her own importance/power
- Delusion of reference
- false belief that behavior of others refer to him/herself; that events, objects or other people have a particular and unusual significance
- Thought withdrawl
- delusion that thoughts are being removed from a person's mind by other people or forces
- Thought insertion
- delusions that thoughts are being implanted in a person's mind by other people or forces
- Thought broadcasting
- Delusions that a person's thougths can be heard by others
- Thought control
- delusions that a person's thoughts are being controlled by other people or forces
- Delusions of jealousy
- false belief derived from pathological jealousy about a person's lover being unfaithful
- Erotomanic delusions
- delusional belief, women > men, someone is deeply in love with them from afar
- Suicidal and homicial ideation
- preoccupation with thoughts of harming self or others
- Obsession
- pathological persistence of an irresistible thought/feeling that cannot be eliminated from consciousness by logical effort, associated with anxiety
- Compulsion
- pathological need to act on an impulse that, if resisted, produces anxiety; repetitive behavior in response to obsession or according to rules
- Phobia
- persistent, irrational, exaggerated, and pathological dread of a specific stimulus/situation; desire to avoid
- Disorientation
- disturbance of orientation in time, place, or person
- Clouding of consciousness
- incomplete clearmindedness iwth disturbances in perception and attitude
- Stupor
- lack of reaction to and unawareness of surroundings
- Delirium
- bewildered, resteless, confused, disoriented reaction associated with fear and hallucinations
- Coma
- profound degree of unconsciousness
- Somnolence
- abnormal drowsiness
- Drowsiness
- state of impaired awareness associated with a desire/inclination to sleep
- sundowning
- syndrome in older people that usually occurs at night; char by drowsiness, confusion, ataxia, and falling
- Amnesia
- partial or total inability to recall past experiences; may be medical or emotional in origin
- Anterograde
- amnesia for events occurring after a point in time
- Retrograde
- amnesia for events occurring before a point in time
- Confabulation
- unconscious filling of gaps in memory by imagined or untrue experiences that a person believes but have no basis in fact
- Deja vu
- illusion of visual recognition in which a new situation is incorrectly regarded as a repetition of a previous memory
- Levels of Memory
-
Immediate - recall seconds to minutes
Recent - last few days
Recent past - past few months
Remote - distant past - Distractability
- inability to concentrate attention; attention is drawn to unimportant or irrelevant stimuli
- Selective inattention
- blocking out only those things that generate anxiety
- Hypervigilance
- excessive attention and focus on all internal and external stimuli, usually secondary to delusional or paranoid states
- Trance
- focused attention and altered consciousness, usually seen in hypnosis and dissociative disorders
- Abstract thinking
- ability to appreciate nuances of meaning; multidimensional thinking, ability to use metaphors and hypotheses appropriately
- Concrete thinking
- literal thinking; literal use of metaphor without understanding of nuances of meaning, one dimensional thought
- Intelligence
- ability to recall, understand, mobilize, and constructively integrate previous learning into new situations
- Mental retardation
-
lower intelligence that interferes with social/vocational performance
Mild IQ 50-70
Moderate 35-50
Severe 20-40
Profound below 25 - Dementia
- pathological and global deterioration of intellectual functioning with clouding of consciousness
- Pseudodementia
- clinical features resembling dementia but not caused by pathological deterioration of brain; often cause by depression
- Insight
- person's ability to understand true cause and meaning of a situation
- Impaired insight
- diminished ability to understand the objective reality of a situation
- Judgement
- ability to assess a situation correctly and act appropriately in the situation
- Impaired judgement
- diminished ability to understand a situation appropriately and correctly, cannot analyze risk/benefits of decisions