Psychological medicine Week 4 Flashcards
What are tactile hallucinations ?
- Are when those brain areas act like they’re processing signals from your body even though there aren’t any such signals
Common ones include:
-A feeling of having skin stretched over the head.
-Thinking snakes or bugs are crawling under the skin or on the body. This type of tactile hallucination is called formication.
-The sensation of being kissed or having sex.
-Feeling as if internal organs are moving.
-Having itching or burning skin.
What is hypnagogic and hypnogogic hallucinations ?
- typically occur in patients who suffer with narcolepsy
- hypnagogic - hallucinations just before patients sleep
- hynogogic - hallucinations just before waking up
Describe different types of Disorganized thoughts ?
- Poverty of content - patients cannot explain themselves, they cannot find the right words to explain how they are feeling
- Tangential speech - patients immediately change subjects cannot stay on task. If you are talking about cars they will immediately go on a tangent and start talking about makeup.
- Word salad - mixing bunch of words, makes no sense
- Preservation - patient only wants to speak about one specific topic
What is psychosis ?
Psychosis is when you have one or more of the following:
- hallucinations
- delusions
- disorganized thoughts
Diagnosis of psychosis involves at least one delusion, hallucination, or episode of disorganized thought. There are various causes of psychosis including mental illness, drug use or withdrawal, and infections.
What is Bupropion ?
- Is an antidepressant medication.
- It is approved for the treatment of major depressive disorder, seasonal affective disorder
- Its also used in smoking cessation - to get patients to stop smoking
What is Fibromyalgia ?
Fibromyalgia is a condition that causes widespread pain and extreme tiredness.
Mirtazapine ?
- Used to treat depression
- ## TCA
What is Major Depressive disorder ?
Major depressive disorder ?
Major depressive disorder ?
The diagnosis of MDD requires ≥ 5 of 9 symptoms in the criteria to be present for ≥ 2 weeks, and one of the symptoms must be either depressed mood or anhedonia.
-In patients with MDD, it is imperative to assess suicide risk. This is heavily tested on exams and should be performed routinely in clinical practice. The biggest risk factor for suicide is a previous attempt.
-In addition, patients with MDD must be assessed for manic/hypomanic symptoms. If present, the use of an SSRI may trigger a manic episode. Instead, these patients may satisfy the criteria for bipolar disorder and would require a mood stabilizer instead.
- ECT is indicated in the treatment of severe treatment-resistant MDD, MDD with psychotic features (as seen in this case), and acute suicidality. The effects of ECT can be dramatically positive in some cases.
What is dysthymia ?
- persistent depressive disorder
- Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia) is defined as ≥ 2 depressive symptoms lasting ≥ 2 years, without any periods of remission lasting > 2 months. Typically, this is a milder form of MDD with a longer duration.
Major depressive disorder with atypical symptoms
MDD with atypical features is associated with the presence of certain mood and somatic symptoms. The most commonly tested is the presence of mood reactivity, or the ability to respond positively to a happy event. Somatic symptoms include increased sleep (not insomnia), increased appetite, and leaden paralysis. Leaden paralysis is a type of fatigue in which patients’ limbs feel like they are “weighed down”.
What is mania ?
DIG FAST
Bipolar disorder ?
Bipolar 1: 1 or more manic episode.
Bipolar 2 : 1 or more hypomanic episode and a depressive disorder
What is Cyclothymic disorder ?
If you have cyclothymia, you’ll have periods of feeling low followed by periods of extreme happiness and excitement (called hypomania) when you do not need much sleep and feel that you have a lot of energy. The periods of low mood do not last long enough and are not severe enough to be diagnosed as clinical depression.
Schizophrenia
Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAO)s ?
- Stop the breakdown of amine neurotransmitters. Which increases the concentrations of these neurotransmitters.
- MOIs are used to treat atypical depression, PARKINSONS , anxiety
