Terms and Definitions Flashcards
Dysthymia
A chronic state of low mood, usually with an insidious onset lasting at least 2 years
Euthymia
Normal, non-depressed, reasonably positive mood
Mood
A person’s predominant feeling at a given time (season/climate)
Affect
Short-lived, observable pattern of behaviour that expresses the subjective emotional state of an individual (weather)
Alexithymia
Inability to express one’s emotions
Anhedonia
Total inability to enjoy life
Psychomotor retardation
- Abnormal stillness
- Abnormally slow walking
- Abnormally long time to initiate movement
Flight of ideas
- Rapid flow of thought
- Accelerated speech with abrupt changes in topic
- Loss of normal structure of thought
- Muddled
- Often seen in manic patients
Pressure of Speech
- Subjects talk too much
- Pressure to get words out
- Fast, loud speech with unnecessary words
Depersonalisation
- Peculiar change in awareness of self
- Patient feels unreal and detached
- Retains some understanding and understands condition is abnormal
Illusion
A false perception of a real stimulus
Affect illusion
Emotional state leads to the incorrect interpretation of a shadow
Pareidolia
Perceive formed objects from ambiguous stimuli - penis in clouds
Completion illusion
Due to inattention, an incomplete object is perceived as complete
Pseudohallucination
- Perceptual experience that is not concretely real
- Lack qualities of full real perceptions
Hallucination
- False perception that occurs in the absence of a stimulus
- Person experiencing has fully real experience
Thought Echo
- As if own thoughts are being spoken out loud
- May have slight change in echo
Thought Withdrawal
Subject feels that thoughts have been removed from head by an external agency so has no thoughts
Thought Broadcast
- Subject feels that thoughts are being shared with others
- Often with large numbers of people via telepathy, radio or TV
Delusion
A fixed, firmly held belief that is held with unshakeable condition despite overwhelming evidence by the subject’s cultural/religious background
Delusions of control/passivity
Subjects thoughts, feelings, actions are not their own but are being imposed/controlled by an outside force
Delusional perception
- Patient receives normal perception which is then associated and interpreted with delusional meaning and has immense personal meaning
- Associating normal perception with something ridiculous like seeing a red car means that you’re going to die in 17 days
Negative symptoms
- Poverty of speech, flat affect, poor motivation and poor attention
- Can result in low activity levels and poor self-care
- Common in chronic schizophrenia
Clouding of consciousness
- Deterioration in thinking attention, perception and memory
- Drowsiness and reduced awareness of environment
Lability
- Subject’s affect is rapidly changeable and there are marked fluctuations
- Emotional incontinence in extreme form
Nihilistic Delusions
Delusion of being dead, no longer existing, about to die or experience terrible doom
Grandiose Delusions
Delusions of being of a special status, special powers, special purpose i.e. the chosen one
Aphasia
Mute
Concrete thinking
Inability to understand abstract ideas or concepts, literalness of understanding or expression
2nd person auditory hallucinations
Voices talk to subject
3rd person auditory hallucinations
Voices talk to each other about subject
Ideas of reference
Delusional belief that innocuous events or coincidences are directly linked and have personal significance to the subject - paranoia usually
Loosening of associations
- Loss of normal structured thinking
- Subjects thoughts are muddled and illogical without clarity
- Thought disorder
Neologisms
New words that have no real meaning
Perseveration
- Repetition of a particular response despite the absence or cessation of the stimulus
- Often seen in organic brain disorders
