circumstantiality
n. a disorder of thought in which thinking and speech proceed slowly and with many unnecessary trivial details. It is sometimes seen in organic psychosis, in schizophrenia, and in people of pedantic ...
classification of psychiatric disorders
Historical aspectsAdvances in classification have made important contributions to the progress of physical, biological, and even the human sciences. Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo laid the ...
depression
1. A mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity.2. A pitted area on an anatomical structure such as a tooth. Mandibular depression is the ...
drug addiction
Chronic physical craving or compulsion to continue to take a drug to avoid the unpleasant physical effects resulting from withdrawal of the drug. Many drugs are associated with addiction including ...
folie à deux
(fol-i a der)a condition in which two people who are closely involved with each other share one or more delusions.
foreclosure
In psychoanalysis, a defence mechanism, first identified in 1956 by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–81), involving the expulsion of a fundamental signifier, such as the phallus as a ...
General Health Questionnaire
A self-rating questionnaire that takes between six and eight minutes to fill in and is designed to provide a rough-and-ready screening device for a wide range of mental disorders excluding psychoses ...
imaginary
1. adj. In everyday usage, existing only in the imagination.2. n. [French imaginaire, connoting ‘illusion’] ‘The imaginary’ is Lacan's term for an internalized representation of the visual world in ...
insanity
Another name for mental disorder, especially in legal contexts, where it refers specifically to conditions that impair one's ability to discharge one's legal responsibilities. See also McNaghten ...
insight
1 Clear and deep understanding or perception.2 The process by which the meaning or significance of a pattern or the solution of a problem suddenly becomes clear, often accompanied by an aha ...
locura
A culture-bound syndrome resembling a chronic psychosis (1) found in several parts of Latin America and among Latino communities in the United States and elsewhere, with signs and symptoms such as ...
mental health
Syn: mental hygiene. The branch of health care and public health concerned with prevention and control of diseases of the mind. It is classified as conditions in which brain function is affected from ...
mental illness
A disputed concept (see, for example, the entries elsewhere in this dictionary on Laing and anti-psychiatry) founded on the everyday contrast between mind and body which, when applied to illness, ...
negativism
n. behaviour that is the opposite of that suggested by others. In active negativism the individual does the opposite of what is asked for (for example, screws the eyes up when asked to open them). In ...
neuroleptic
1 Any of the dopamine antagonist drugs, including any of the phenothiazines, butyrophenones, dibenzodiazepines, or thioxanthenes, that are used in the treatment of psychoses. Also called an ...
neurosis
An emotional maladjustment with the predominant symptom of anxiety together with possible impairment of thinking or judgement. It may be characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or sexual ...
paranoia
n.1. a mental illness or a symptom of a mental illness characterized by delusions, sometimes organized into a system. Antipsychotic medication is often beneficial. 2. a state of mind in which the ...
Paul Eugen Bleuler
(1857–1939) Swiss psychiatrist,pioneer in the diagnosis and treatment of psychosis. Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia and attributed the symptoms to psychological rather than physiological ...
prison psychosis
A misleading name for Ganser syndrome, which is not classified as a psychosis (1) and is not peculiar to prisoners. [So called because Ganser's original description of it was based on three prisoners ...
psychological disorders
The time is the late nineteenth century, the place a physician's clinic. A female patient complains of dramatic mood swings, paralysis on one side of her body, hallucinations, convulsive seizures ...
