Phenomenology Flashcards
Akathisia
A feeling of motor restlessness, particularly of the legs, usually a side effect of neuroleptic (anti-psychotic) medication
Athetoid Movements
Abnormal movements that are slow, writhing, involuntary and involving the extremities. They are often described as snake like.
Automatic Movements/Automatism
Involuntary movements that occur in the setting of altered consciousness
Catalepsy/Waxy Flexibility
Rigid maintenance of a body position over an extended period of time
Cataplexy
Episodes of sudden bilateral loss of muscle tone resulting in the individual collapsing, often in association with intense emotions
Catatonic Behaviour
Marked motor abnormalities, including:
- Catalepsy [motor immobility]
- Purposeless agitation [certain types of excessive motor activity]
- Extreme negativism [apparently motiveless resistance to instructions]
- Mutism
- Posturing
- Stereotyped movements
- Echolalia
- Echopraxia
Choreiform Movements
Irregular, involuntary movements which are faster, jerkier and more discrete than athetoid movements
Compulsion
Unwanted, ego-dystonic impulse to perform certain behaviours
Disinhibited Behaviour
Behaviour that demonstrates poor self control or loss of capacity to resist unacceptable impulses
Echopraxia
Repetition by imitation of the movements of another
Psychomotor retardation
Slowing of body movements secondary to psychic dysfunction
Agrammatism
The inability to string words together in phrases or sentences within grammar rules
Anomia
Difficulty finding words to label people or things even though they may be familiar
Aphasia
A loss or deterioration of the ability to comprehend and express ideas through language (writing, reading and reading)
Aprosodia
The loss of prosodic speech
Coprolalia
Compulsive and explosive profanity or obscenities
Dysarthria
Poorly articulated speech due to anatomical dysfunction
Dysphasia
An incomplete aphasia
Echolalia
The pathological, parrot-like and apparently senseless repetition of a word or phrase just spoken by another person
Palilalia
The involuntary repetition of one’s own words or parts thereof
Alogia
An impoverishment in thinking
Thought blocking
The patient’s speech and thought are interrupted midsentence and do not resume their course. Often describe “the idea disappeared from my head”
Circumstantiality
Talking at length around a point before finally getting to the point, usually in an overly detailed fashion
Clang Associations
A form of loose associations in which statements are connected by sound and not meaning (e.g. station-nation-ablation)
Denial
An inability or extreme reluctance to accept some aspect of reality even when it is demonstrated by another
Derailment
A pattern of speech in which a person’s ideas slip off track onto another than is completely unrelated or only obliquely related. It occurs between clauses
Flight of Ideas
A nearly continuous flow of accelerated speech with abrupt changes from topic to topic that are usually based on understandable associations, distracting stimuli or play on words
Neologisms
The use of novel vocabulary made up by the patient but not recognised by the patient as new or nonsense words
Perseveration
The illogical and seemingly uncontrollable repetition of an idea, phrase or action, usually out of context and in a mechanical fashion
Poverty of Speech
Little meaningful information is contained in the patient’s conversation (either in amount or content)
Rumination
The persistent mulling over a theme or thought - usually unpleasant
Tangentiality
A disturbance in the associations of thinking and conversation in which the patient changes the topic from the focus of the interview and follows another line of conversation. It is fluent, grammatical and logically connected.
Word Salad/Incoherence
Speech or thinking that is essentially incomprehensible to others because words or phrases are joined together without a logical or meaningful connection. This disturbance occurs within clauses.
Capgras’ Syndrom
The delusional conviction that a personally important individual (e.g. wife/husband) has been replaced by a stranger
Delusion
A fixed false belief despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument of evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture.
Bizarre Delusion
Person’s culture would regard this as totally implausible
Erotomanic Delusion
Another person, usually of higher status, is in love with the individual
Grandiose Delusion
Inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity or a special relationship to a deity or famous person.
Delusion of Jealousy
One’s sexual partner is unfaithful
Nihilistic Delusion
Belief that one is dead or empty or that a calamity is impending or has taken place
Paranoid Delusion/Delusions of Persecution
Belief that they or someone close to them is being attacked, harassed, cheated, persecuted or conspired against
Delusions of Reference
Belief that unsuspicious occurrences (especially in media) refer to them specifically
Somatic Delusions
Belief that one’s body is abnormal in appearance or function
Thought Broadcasting Delusion
Belief that one’s thoughts are being broadcast out loud so that they can be perceived by other people
Thought Insertion Delusion
Certainty that one’s thoughts are not their own, but are inserted into their mind
Magical Thinking
The erroneous belief that one’s words, thoughts, or actions will cause or prevent a specific outcome in some way which defies commonly understood laws of cause and effect
Obsessions
A consistent and unwanted thought that intrudes into consciousness despite efforts to suppress it
Overvalued Ideas
An illogical or false idea that is held relatively firmly, though not quite with delusional intensity
Phobia
A persistent, irrational fear or a specific object, activity or situation that results in a compelling desire to avoid it
Preoccupation
Term used to describe a topic or recurrent theme that is unduly prominent in the person’s thought and conversation, even when other topics are raised
Deja vu
The feeling that one has experienced a particular moment before
Depersonalisation
An alteration in the perception or experience of the self so that one feels detached to one’s mental process or body - as if one is an outside observer
Derealisation
An alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems strange or unreal
Hallucination
Perception without a stimulus
Illusion
A misperception or misinterpretation of a real external stimulus
Jaimais vu
Feeling of unfamiliarity in a situation or an environment that is actually familiar
Confabulation
The fabrication of ideas and circumstances that are not consistent with reality - usually accompanies severe memory impairment
