A characterological disorder in which a person consistently disregards and violates other people's rights and has no guilt for doing so.
Comorbid (co-mor'-bid): Two or more distinctly different disorders appearing at the same time and negatively impacting one another.
A disorder in which a psychological complaint is unconsciously converted to a physical symptom. A simple example of a psychological conversion is getting a tension headache because one is stressed. To be diagnosable as an actual conversion disorder, the symptom/s must be causing significant problems in social, work, relational, or other areas of functioning. Conversion disorders are typically pretty extreme -- blindness or paralysis of a limb without medical cause, for example.
The deterioration of psychological functionality in a person who was previously able to cope with his or her problems. For example, someone who has a psychotic disorder like schizophrenia may be able to live a fairly normal life with medication. If she stops taking her medication, however, she may decompensate (ie deteriorate) back into psychosis.
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 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 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.
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.
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
To see or diagnose symptoms or a disorder where one may not exist.
Example: Early psychologists pathologized normal female behavior when they diagnosed women who had emotional outbursts with hysteria.
Stressors, problems, family constellations, or genetics that make one more likely to develop a disorder.
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 psychopathology (a problem) or psychopathy (specialized term for someone with antisocial personality disorder).
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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