Vocab Terms Flashcards
Addison’s disease
an endocrine disease caused by hypo-functioning of the thyroid gland.
Affective functioning
feelings and emotions such as happiness, anger, anxiety, sadness, depression that are observed in a client during a mental status exam. Non-verbal examples include tears, facial expression, voice tone, and bodily posture. Drummond and Jones (2006) indicate that this domain includes dimensions of personality such as attitudes, motives, and emotional behavior, temperament, and personality traits.
Al-Anon
an organization similar to AA for spouses and family members of those with alcohol related disorders. The purpose of the organization is to assist the spouse and the family members to regain self-esteem, to discontinue feeling blame for the user’s drinking disorder, and to restructure their lives.
Alateen
an organization similar to Al-Anon for children and adolescents to help them understand their parent’s alcohol disorders.
Alogia
an impoverishment in thinking that is inferred from observing impoverished speech and language behavior.
Alzheimer’s Type (Dementia)
the gradual and continuing cognitive decline consisting of progressive deficits in memory or cognition, not due to other central nervous system, substance effects, or other systemic conditions known to cause dementia.
Amnesia
the partial or total forgetting of past experiences, which can be associated with organic brain syndromes or functional, non-organic disorders.
Anemia
a pathological deficiency in the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood measured in unit volume concentrations of hemoglobin, red blood cell volume, and red blood cell number.
Anorexia Nervosa
chronic failure to eat for fear of gaining weight; characterized by an extreme loss of appetite that results in severe malnutrition, semi-starvation, and sometimes death.
Antabuse
Antabuse (disulfiram) is a drug used as an adverse conditioning treatment for alcohol dependence by triggering a very distressing (and sometimes dangerous) reaction to alcohol. Therefore ‘alcoholics’ who agree to sue Antabuse as a deterrent must be fully informed about its potential dangers and a physician should monitor its use.
Autonomic Arousal
physiological responses to emotion controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) - that part of the nervous system that governs the smooth muscles, the hear muscle, the glands, the viscera, and the sensory system. The ANS. is comprised of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems and maintains homeostasis in the body generally without conscious control. This system affects heart rate, digestion, respiration rate, salivation, perspiration, diameter of the pupils, micturition (urination, and sexual arousal. Emotional arousal such as fear or excitement, for example, increases hear and respiration rates, papillary dilation, perspiration, and reduces digestive activity.
Avolition
an inability to initiate and persist in goal-directed activities.
Bipolar Disorder
a mood disorder involving both depressive and/or manic episodes. Manic (and sometimes depressive) episodes are typically bizarre and associated with delusions (fixed erroneous beliefs) that individuals within the person’s culture would regard as totally implausible.
Bizarre Delusions
fixed false beliefs of a pathological nature. Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders and particularly in schizophrenia. They typically involve a phenomenon that the person’s culture would regard as totally implausible.
Brief Psychotic Disorder
a disturbance, lasting at least one day, which involves delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior.
Bulimia Nervosa
excessive overeating or uncontrolled binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting.
Catatonia
a form of withdrawal in which an individual retreats into a completely immobile state showing a total lack of responsiveness to stimulation.
Cognitive functioning
conscious intellectual activity, thought organization, capacity for reasoning, and memory. Speech behavior may reflect cognitive functioning such as fragmented, fluid, staccato, slow, etc. Cognition is the process of obtaining, organizing, and using intellectual knowledge. This domain reflects the understanding set for daily living. The individual performs acts that acquire information that is stored in memory only to be retrieved at a later time. The interviewer proves for the mental strategies or plans the client is able to access and utilize. This domain includes the activities of input, storage, and output of information. In summary, Drummond and Jones (2006) describe the cognitive domain to include the various tasks and levels in perceiving, thinking, and remembering. The levels refer to the cognitive domain of learning.
Coitus
the physical union of male and female sex organs
Compulsivity
actions or behaviors that an individual may consider irrational but feels compelled to do.
Conversion Disorder
a psychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of a conversion symptom such as numbness, paralysis, loss of function, or seizures, but where no neurological explanation can be found. The disorder is presumably caused by an intrapsychic conflict and can emerge suddenly in response to stress in a person’s life.
Comorbidity
referring to two or more interactive disease processes. Individuals with a substance use disorder, for example, often have depression or post-traumatic stress disorder or both as one or more comorbid disorders.
Delusional Disorder
a psychotic disorder similar to schizophrenia in which the delusional system is the basic or even the only abnormality. Schizophrenia and delusional disorder are distinct disorders which often share certain features such as paranoia, suspiciousness, and unrealistic thinking. Schizophrenia, however, is associated with a loss of contact with reality and a decline in general functioning. In contrast delusional disorder, a much less common disorder, preserves contact with reality except for the focused delusional thinking that comprises specific functioning while preserving most realistic activity.
Demand Characteristics
the sum total of cues that convey the counselor’s wishes, expectations, and worldviews to clients and influence their behavior. According to Kanter, Kohlenberg and Loftus (2002) demand characteristics plays a role in dissociative identity disorder, repressed memory controversy, and during treatment rationales.
Dementia
the development of multiple deficits in memory or cognition that are due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition, to the persisting effects of the substance, or to multiple etiologies including Alzheimer’s disease.
Dependence
when pertaining to physical dependence on substances, refers to a state resulting from habitual use of a drug so that negative physical withdrawal symptoms result from abrupt discontinuation; derived from a pattern of substance use that leads to clinically significant impairment indicated by increasingly larger amounts over a longer period of time than intended.
Dependence
when pertaining to non-substance dependence refers to the reliance on or needing of someone or something for aid and support.
Depersonalization
A feeling of estrangement or detachment from oneself.
Depersonalization Disorder
A disorder associated with alterations in the perception or experience of the self so that one feels detached from, and as if one is an outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body.
Differential Diagnosis
the consideration of more than one alternative diagnosis with similar features. For example, a counselor interviewing someone with symptoms of depression must consider a variety of diagnoses such as major depression, dysthymic, adjustment disorder with depressed mood, substance induced depression, and bipolar disorder, depressed type.
Dissociative Amnesia
Formerly referred to as psychogenic amnesia, dissociative amnesia is a pervasive loss of memory of significant personal information usually of a traumatic or stressful nature that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.
Dissociative Fugue
an individual who experiences sudden, unexpected travel away from one’s home with the loss of recall for one’s past.
Dissociative Identity Disorder
the presence of two or more distinct personalities or identity states that control an individual combined with that individual’s inability to recall significant personal information beyond ordinary forgetfulness.
Double Depression
chronic, minor or intermittent depression, as well as major depressive disorder. For example, an individual suffering from dysthymic disorder may have one or more episodes of major depressive disorder as an additional diagnosis. This combination comprises double depression.
Dysfunction
abnormal functioning
Dyspareunia
a kind of sexual dysfunction characterized by pain during intercourse. Men may suffer from this disorder but it is more typically a female problem.
Dysthymic Disorder
a chronically depressed mood that occurs for most of the day more days than not for at least two years.
Emaciation
the loss of substantial amounts of needed fat and muscle tissue, often due to a lack of nutrients from starvation or disease. It may be present in fashion models that choose the emaciation look and as the result of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. The bones in an emaciated person are distinguishable, shoulder blades are sharp, ribs and spine can be clearly seen, and extremities are not significantly wider than the bones that support them. Although emaciation can be acquired by humans deliberately, it is also found in animals and peoples across the planet due to lack of food and starvation.
Endocrine Diseases
illnesses like hyper or hypothyroidism, acromegaly (gigantism), adrenal hyperplasia, and diabetes mellitus caused by abnormalities of “glands” such as the thyroid, pituitary, adrenal, and pancreas.
Erotomanic
a period of delusion in which the central theme is that another person is in love with the individual.
Etiological Factors
the factors that contribute to or cause disease.
Exhibitionism
Involves exposing one’s genitals to a stranger. The onset is usually before age 18.
Exposure Therapy
exposure to real-life situations as a component of effective fear reduction.
Factitious
the intentional production of physical or psychological signs or symptoms.
Fetishism
involves the use of non-living objects. The person usually masturbates while holding, rubbing, or smelling the object.
Flooding
a respondent conditioning technique in which extinction is achieved by confronting the anxiety-producing stimulus.
Frotteurism
occurring most commonly between the ages of 15 and 25 and involving achieving arousal and orgasm by fantasizing about or touching or rubbing against a non-consenting person.
