Chapter 22: Psychiatric Emergencies Flashcards
The basic activities a person usually accomplishes during a normal day, such as eating, dressing, and bathing.
Activities of Daily Living
A change in the way a person thinks and behaves that may signal disease in the central nervous system or elsewhere in the body.
Altered Mental Status
How a person functions or acts in response to his or her environment.
Behavior
The point at which a person’s reactions to events interfere with activities of daily living; this becomes a psychiatric emergency when it causes a major life interruption, such as attempted suicide.
Behavioral Crisis
A persistent mood of sadness, despair, and discouragement; may be a symptom of many different mental and physical disorders, or it may be a disorder on its own.
Depression
A serious behavioral condition in which a person exhibits agitated behavior combined with disorientation, hallucinations, or delusions; also called agitated delirium or exhaustive mania.
Excited Delirium
A disorder in which there is no known physiologic reason for the abnormal functioning of an organ or organ system.
Functional Disorder
Temporary or permanent dysfunction of the brain, caused by a disturbance in the physical or physiologic functioning of brain tissue.
Organic Brain Syndrome
Restrictions of chest wall movements and/or airway obstruction; can rapidly lead to sudden death.
Positional Asphyxia
A delayed stress reaction that develops after a horrifying ordeal that involved harm or the threat of physical harm.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
An illness with psychological or behavioral symptoms and/or impairment in functioning caused by a social, psychologic. genetic, physical, chemical, or biologic disturbance.
Psychiatric Disorder
An emergency in which abnormal behavior threatens a person’s own health and safety or the health and safety of another person, for example, when a person becomes suicidal, homicidal, or has a psychotic episode.
Psychiatric Emergency
A mental disorder characterized by the loss of contact with reality.
Psychosis
A complex, difficult-to-identify mental disorder whose onset typically occurs during early adulthood. Symptoms typically become more prominent over time and include delusions, hallucinations, a lack of interest in pleasure, and erratic speech.
Schizophrenia
