Clicking on hyperlinked terms will take you to a page with the term's definition, a brief explanation, how to pronounce it, examples of use in everyday speech and, when relevant, suggestions to help you in your stories.
A characterological disorder in which a person consistently disregards and violates other people's rights and has no guilt for doing so.
Axis II refers to personality disorders and mental retardation, which get their own line in a formal diagnostic explanation. However, the term is often used to refer exclusively to personality disorders.
Comorbid (co-mor'-bid): Two or more distinctly different disorders appearing at the same time and negatively impacting one another.
Delusions are beliefs that are not grounded in any realistic evidence. Extreme examples would be things like believing that the people in the apartment upstairs can read your mind, or that there's a secret government conspiracy to replace all males between the ages of 20 and 25 with robots (the latter is called Capgras syndrome).
More often than not, delusions are nonbizarre; that is, they're completely feasible—the police are after me, my significant other is cheating on me, advertisers are trying to control our minds. Impossibly strange ideas like Capgras syndrome are called bizarre delusions.
The idea that genetic vulnerabilities toward a disorder must be triggered by environmental stressors for the disorder to actually manifest.
Tendency to avoid taking responsibility for a task or problem because you assume others will do so.
Dissociation is an altered state of consciousness in which your awareness "splits"—it’s what happens when you suddenly realize you don’t remember your drive home because you were thinking about something else. It’s what happens when you’ve watched a really great movie that felt like it was an hour long when it was actually two. It’s what happens when you're daydreaming and you have to ask others to repeat what they said.
Dissociation can be desirable, as in the case of flow, or pathological, as in dissociative identity disorder.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that regulates emotion, motivation, and feelings of pleasure and reward. It is important to understanding addiction, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's Disease.
Shorthand for the DSM-IV-TR, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. The DSM is psychology's "bible." It provides information on symptoms, how similar diagnoses differ from one another, how common the disorder is at any given time, the progress or course of the disorder, and any familial patterns.
If a therapist believes that a client may carry out a threat of harm to another party, said therapist must warn the party in question. This is one of the few times that confidentiality does not apply to the client-therapist relationship. Duty to warn is sometimes also referred to as the Tarasoff Law.
GABA, or Gamma-AminoButyric Acid, is a neurotransmitter involved in relaxation, sedation, and sleep.
Hallucinations are sensory experiences without sensory stimulus; in other words, you see (visual hallucinations), hear (auditory hallucinations), or feel (tactile hallucinations) things that aren't really there.
An agreement (typically a release or other form) that says the individual understands the procedures, risks, benefits, and other aspects of a treatment or study, and agrees to participate voluntarily.
A tendency to think the members of your group are better than anyone outside the group. A good example is with sports teams. Everyone who roots for your team is better than everyone who roots against your team.
The first meeting with a client, in which the clinician gathers information on the client's concerns and problems. Typically the intake is also used to gather background information on the person's life and problems. Different therapists take different approaches to intakes. Some prefer a fairly structured interview in which they ask standard questions; others prefer to let the client talk and see where the conversation takes them.
You can walk through an intake interview and see a sample writeup by using the link in the title of this entry.
A panel that reviews proposed studies. IRB members include clinicians, researchers, and community advocates to be sure that a study is ethical and that the people participating are being protected. IRBs take their responsibilities very seriously, and it's not uncommon for them to send back a proposed study with changes, often more than once.
Pretending to have a (psychological) problem or disorder for non-psychological reasons, e.g. to get out of work or other responsibilities, to avoid punishment for criminal behavior, to get money, etc.
If someone pretends to have problems for psychological reasons, they are diagnosed with a Factitious Disorder, which used to be called Munchausen's. In other words, they want the attention or kindness of others and don't know how else to get it. Important note: Suicide threats and self-injury are not indicative of factitious disorders!
People with bipolar disorder experience ups and downs that are outside the range of what most of us will ever experience. The manic phase of bipolar disorder is leaves people feeling either euphoric or extremely irritable.
Neurotransmitters are the chemicals everybody is talking about when they mention "brain chemistry." Neurotransmitters pass messages from one neuron (nerve cell in the brain or spinal cord) to the next.
Norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter involved in concentration, motivation, and alertness
Stressors, problems, family constellations, or genetics that make one more likely to develop a disorder.
something that existed before the diagnosis (or a new diagnosis). You can also refer to premorbid function, but not premorbid factors. See also comorbid.
Chief complaint or symptoms; the problem the client says s/he's come for. As therapy goes on, there may be issues in addition to the initial presenting problem. This can happen because the person didn't realize the importance of some experience, or because s/he wasn't comfortable talking about it in the first session/s.
A loss of contact with reality as most people experience it, usually characterized by hallucinations and/or delusions. This is different from psychopathy (a problem) or psychopath (outdated term for someone who hurts other people and doesn't feel bad about it).
Everyone experiences the world a little differently, and some people argue that what we call reality is a social construct (an idea we all agree is real, the way we all agree that rectangular pieces of paper with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the number 5 is worth more than the same kind of paper with a picture of George Washington and a number 1 on it). When people are experiencing psychosis, though, their realities are radically different from those of people around them.
A packet of mental information used to make sense of experiences, events, and information; and guide responses.
Feeling confident that you can accomplish or master what you set out to accomplish or master.
By behaving as if something is true, the individual makes it come true.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates regulates mood, appetite, and sleep. Depression is often blamed at least in part on reduced levels of serotonin in the brain.
SSRIs are the most common antidepressants: Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Buspar, Effexor. Though psychiatry argues that they're not addictive because you don't need increasing doses to get the desired effect, getting off of them can sure feel like withdrawal.
A V code is a "problem of living" rather than a disorder. Many V codes refer to relational problems, such as ongoing conflict between siblings, parents and children, and romantic and sexual partners.
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