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Psychiatry
Glossary of Signs and Symptoms
| Term | Definition 1 | Definition 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Abreaction | A process by which a painful experience or a conflict, is brought back to consciousness; in this process, the person not only recalls, but also relives the repressed material, which is accompanied by the appropriate affective response. | |
| Abstract thinking | Thinking characterized by the ability to grasp the essentials of a whole, to break a whole into its parts, and to discern common properties. To think symbolically. | |
| Abulia | Reduced impulse to act and to think, associated with indifference about consequences of action. Occurs as a result of neurological deficit, depression, and schizophrenia. | |
| Acalculia | Loss of ability to do calculations; not caused by anxiety or impairment in concentration. Occurs with neurological deficit and learning disorder. | |
| Acataphasia | Disordered speech in which statements are incorrectly formulated. Patients may express themselves with words that sound like the ones intended, but are not appropriate to the thoughts, or they may use totally inappropriate expressions. | |
| Acathexis | Lack of feeling associated with an ordinarily emotionally charged subject; in psychoanalysis, it denotes the patient’s detaching or transferring of emotion from thoughts and ideas. Also called decathexis. | Occurs in anxiety, dissociative, schizophrenic, and bipolar disorders. |
| Acenesthesia | Loss of sensation of physical existence. | |
| Acrophobia | Dread of high places. | |
| Acting out | Behavioral response to an unconscious drive or impulse that brings about temporary partial relief of inner tension; relief is attained by reacting to a present situation as if it were the situation that originally gave rise to the drive or impulse. | Common in borderline states. |
| Aculalia | Nonsense speech associated with marked impairment of comprehension. Occurs in mania, schizophrenia, and neurological deficit. | |
| Adiadochokinesia | Inability to perform rapid alternating movements. Occurs with neurological deficit and cerebellar lesions. | |
| Adynamia | Weakness and fatigability, characteristic of neurasthenia and depression. | |
| Aerophagia | Excessive swallowing of air. Seen in anxiety disorder. | |
| Affect | The subjective and immediate experience of emotion attached to ideas or mental representations of objects. | Affect has outward manifestations that can be classified as restricted, blunted, flattened, broad, labile, appropriate, or inappropriate. See also mood. |
| Ageusia | Lack or impairment of the sense of taste. Seen in depression and neurological deficit. | |
| Aggression | Forceful, goal-directed action that can be verbal or physical; the motor counterpart of the affect of rage, anger, or hostility. Seen in neurological deficit, temporal lobe disorder, impulse-control disorders, mania, and schizophrenia | |
| Agitation | Severe anxiety associated with motor restlessness. | |
| Agnosia | Inability to understand the importance or significance of sensory stimuli; cannot be explained by a defect in sensory pathways or cerebral lesion; | the term has also been used to refer to the selective loss or disuse of knowledge of specific objects because of emotional circumstances, as seen in certain schizophrenic, anxious, and depressed patients. Occurs with neurological deficit. |
| Agoraphobia | Morbid fear of open places or leaving the familiar setting of the home. May be present with or without panic attacks. | |
| Agraphia | Loss or impairment of a previously possessed ability to write. | |
| Ailurophobia | Dread of cats. | |
| Akathisia | Subjective feeling of motor restlessness manifested by a compelling need to be in constant movement; may be seen as an extrapyramidal adverse effect of antipsychotic medication. May be mistaken for psychotic agitation. | |
| Akinesia | Lack of physical movement, as in the extreme immobility of catatonic schizophrenia; can also occur as an extrapyramidal effect of antipsychotic medication. | |
| Akinetic mutism | Absence of voluntary motor movement or speech in a patient who is apparently alert (as evidenced by eye movements). Seen in psychotic depression and catatonic states. | |
| Alexia | Loss of a previously possessed reading facility; not explained by defective visual acuity. Compare with Dyslexia. | |
| Alexithymia | Inability or difficulty in describing or being aware of one’s emotions or moods; elaboration of fantasies associated with depression, substance abuse, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). | |
| Algophobia | Dread of pain. | |
| Alogia | Inability to speak because of a mental deficiency or an episode of dementia. | |
| Ambivalence | Coexistence of two opposing impulses toward the same thing in the same person at the same time. Seen in schizophrenia, borderline states, and obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCDs). | |
| Amimia | Lack of the ability to make gestures or to comprehend those made by others. | |
| Amnesia | Partial or total inability to recall past experiences; may be organic (amnestic disorder) or emotional (dissociative amnesia) in origin. |
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avemaria