Psychiatric Terminology

Psychiatric Terminology

• Abuse is the excessive use of a substance that deviates from societal norms.
• Affect refers to the outwardly manifested emotional range attached to ideas.
  • Blunt affect is characterized as slow or dull.
  • Flat affect is the absence or near absence of affective expression signs.
  • Inappropriate affect is incongruent with the emotional feeling.
  • Labile affect involves an unstable mood with rapid changes.
  • Broad affect shows a full range of emotional expression.
  • Restricted affect shows only one type of expression.
• Agitation refers to excitement with severe motor restlessness.
• Akathisia is motor restlessness generally expressed as the inability to sit still.
• Akinesia is the absence of movement.
• Alogia is an inability to speak.
• Ambivalence involves opposing feelings or emotions, such as love and hate.
• Anhedonia is the feeling of no joy.
• Anxiety is a feeling of apprehension or tension and fear of the unknown.
• Apathy is a lack of feeling, interest, concern, or emotion.
• Associative looseness is disorganized thinking that jumps between unrelated ideas e.g., "cannot see the sky...oh my love...just asking...mmm maybe tomorrow".
• Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive disorder, is a mood disorder with manic behavior episodes, with or without a history of depression.
• Circumstantiality involves answering a question with excessive, unnecessary details.
  • Example: When asked about weekend plans, a patient provides a long, rambling answer before finally stating their intention to stay home.
• Clang association involves rhyming of words e.g., "I am reading a book, in a shady nook, with the food I cooked."
• Confusion is a state of being bewildered and unclear.
• Coprolalia involves repeating socially unacceptable words.
• Confabulation involves filling memory gaps with untrue experiences that someone believes in reality with detailed fantasy.
  • Example: When asked about her day, a patient describes visiting a friend from Canada who gave her gifts, despite spending the day alone in her apartment.
• Cyclothymia involves mood swings of hypomania and depression.
• Dependence is when a drug user takes or increases the drug dose to prevent the onset of symptoms or withdrawal.
• Disinhibition is the inability to suppress socially unacceptable urges or statements.
• Disorientation involves disturbances in orientation to time, place, or person.
• Dysthymia involves chronic depressed mood disturbances lasting two years or more.
• Delusions are fixed, false beliefs with no basis in reality.
  • Paranoid delusions involve the belief that someone is going to kill them.
  • Grandiose delusions involve the false belief that one is powerful, like thinking of themselves as the most handsome person.
  • Religious delusions involve beliefs, such as the devil instructing the person to do something.
  • Somatic delusions involve beliefs about physical health, like believing one might get sick.
  • Ideas of reference involve the belief that events or actions refer to oneself, such as believing a TV figure told them to hurt their neighbor.
• Depression is a mood disorder with sadness, despair, apathy, and discouragement.
• Denial involves avoiding disagreeable realities and refusing to recognize them.
• Desensitization involves gradual exposure to stress-provoking stimuli.
• Dyskinesia involves abnormal involuntary skeletal movements, usually producing jerky motions.
• Dystonia involves rigidity of muscles that control posture, gait, and ocular movement.
• Echolalia is the repetition of heard words.
  • Example: Repeating "Can you please keep the door open?" after hearing it.
• Echopraxia is repetitive, meaningless movement or imitating others.
• Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves administering electric shocks to clients with manic-depressive disorders.
• Euphoria is a subjective, exaggerated feeling of well-being characterized by confidence, elation, and assurance.
• Extrapyramidal side effects (EPSE) are drug-induced Parkinsonism.
• Exhibitionism involves displaying body parts to attract others.
• Fear is a response to an objective, external threat.
• Fetishism involves adoring something that serves as a substitute for the original love object.
• Flight of ideas involves a flow of verbalization that jumps between unrelated topics, but there is some connection, although difficult to identify.
  • Example: "What is today?...might not be taking a bath...I will be cooking at home...the dog kept on barking... there are flowers around me...the food for sure will be delicious."
• Flooding involves exposure to fear.
• Gait refers to the manner of progression in walking.
• Hallucinations are false sensory perceptions without external stimuli.
  • Visual hallucinations involve seeing things that are not there.
  • Auditory hallucinations involve hearing voices that are not present.
  • Olfactory hallucinations involve smelling things that do not exist.
  • Tactile hallucinations involve feeling touched without stimuli.
  • Gustatory hallucinations involve experiencing taste in the absence of stimuli.
• Helplessness involves being incapable and powerless.
• Hopelessness involves despairing and without hope.
• Hypervigilance involves being alert to danger.
• Hypomania is an elevated state less intense than full mania.
• Hypersomnia involves increased and prolonged sleeping.
• Insomnia involves an inability to sleep or disrupted sleep patterns.
• Illusion involves misinterpretation of a real sensory stimulus.
  • Example: mistaking a gray sock on the floor for a mouse.
• Libido is energy usually associated with sexual instinct.
• Limit setting involves establishing a structured environment with clear ground rules.
• Lucid intervals are periods when a patient's reasoning and judgment appear normal.
• Malingering involves deliberately pretending an illness or disability.
• Mania is a mood disorder with irritability, elation, and hyperactivity.
• Masochism involves gaining sexual pleasure from being physically hurt.
• Mutism involves refusal to speak.
• Negativism involves motiveless resistance to all instruction.
• Oculogyric crisis involves eyes rolled back in a locked position.
• Obsession involves recurrent, disturbing thoughts difficult to push out of the mind.
• Compulsion involves repetitive behavior that a person must do to decrease anxiety.
• Neologism involves inventing new words meaningful only to the person.
  • Example: "I cannot stay with you because you are a nic-no-kets."
• Paranoid involves extreme suspiciousness of others and their actions.
• Pica involves the ingestion of non-edible food.
• Phobia involves exaggerated fear of non-dangerous objects or situations.
• Postpartum depression occurs 30 days or less in the postpartum period.
• Psychomotor retardation involves slow speech and body movement.
• Psychosis is a mental illness where patients lose contact with reality and demonstrate bizarre behavior.
• Psyche refers to the mind.
• Primary gain involves relieving anxiety by an individual to feel better.
• Secondary gain involves relieving anxiety with the help of others.
• Perseveration involves resistance to changing the topic and verbally repeating a sentence.
  • Example: repeatedly answering "I am fine" regardless of the question.
• Preoccupation involves being engrossed.
• Religiosity involves preoccupation with religious ideas or content.
• Resilience is the ability to move forward despite psychosocial diversity or genetic vulnerability.
• Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs).
• Sadism involves gaining sexual pleasure by inflicting pain on a partner.
• Somatic is an adjective referring to the body.
• Somnambulism is sleepwalking.
• Stereotype involves the persistent repetition of senseless acts or words.
• Suicide is a self-inflicted death.
• Sialorrhea involves excessive drooling of saliva.
• Xerostomia involves reduction of saliva.
• Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is an irreversible neurologic disorder.
• Tricyclic Antidepressants (TCAs).
• Tolerance is the need to increase the amount of a substance to achieve the same effects.
• Transference is an unconscious emotional reaction to a current situation based on previous experience.
• Countertransference is a reaction based on the nurse's past experience.
• Thought blocking is a sudden stop of thought, unable to continue the train of thought.
  • Example: "I am going to buy a new bag...I forgot to say what is next".
• Thought broadcasting is a delusional belief that others can hear or know what the client is thinking.
• Thought control is a delusional belief that others can control a person's thoughts against his will.
• Thought insertion is a delusional belief that others have the ability to put thoughts in a person's mind against his will.
• Thought stopping is a technique to stop a client from thinking of unwelcoming thoughts.
• Tic is an involuntary, recurrent muscular spasm, which can be motor or vocal.
• Word salad involves combining words or phrases that have no connection or sense.
  • Example: "I am fine...apple tree...books...toys for sale...be okay."
• Worthlessness is having no value.