| Term | Definition |
| Psychological Disorder | a syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individuals cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior |
| Medical Model | the concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital |
| DSM-5 | the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders |
| Anxiety Disorders | psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety |
| Generalized Anxiety Disorder | an anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense; apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal |
| Panic Disorder | an anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations |
| Phobias | an anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation |
| Social Anxiety Disorder | intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such |
| Agoraphobia | fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic |
| Obsessive Compulsive Disorder | a disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts and/or actions |
| PTSD | a disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for 4 weeks or more after a traumatic experience |
| Posttraumatic Growth | positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises |
| Mood Disorder | psychological disorder characterized by emotional extremes |
| Major Depressive Disorder | a mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, 2 or more weeks with 5 or more symptoms, at least 1 of which must be either (1) depressed mood (2) loss of interest or pleasure |
| Mania | a mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state |
| Bipolar Disorder | a mood disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania |
| Rumination | compulsive fretting; overthinking about out problems and their causes |
| Schizophrenia | a psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and diminished or inappropriate emotional expression |
| Psychosis | a psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions |
| Delusions | false beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders |
| Hallucination | false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus |
| Somatic Symptom Disorder | a psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause |
| Conversion Disorder | a disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found |
| Illness Anxiety Disorder | a disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease |
| Dissociative Disorder | disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings |
