Author: Glossary

From the greek “without voice,” the inability to speak, either because of psychological factors such as a fear of speaking in public or because of brain damage. Patients with aphemia are aware of their speech impairment and are able to understand speech. A form of dysphemia.    

The fear of infinity.  

Lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern. The condition of not being interested in anything, or of not wanting to do anything. Absence or suppression of feeling, concern, passion; indifference to things generally found exciting. Lacking interest, indifference associated with major depression and other psychiatric conditions. Indifference; insensibility; lack of emotion. Apathy refers to the…

An early psychoanalytic term for what is now called phobia. Hysteria combined with an anxiety neurosis.  

In dsm-iv-tr, this category of disorders includes panic disorder with and without  goraphobia, agoraphobia without a history of panic disorder, specific phobia, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd), acute stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, anxiety disorder due to a general medical condition, and substance-induced anxiety disorder. A disorder in which anxiety is the…

Apprehension, tension, or uneasiness from anticipation of danger, the source of which is largely unknown or unrecognized. Primarily of intrapsychic origin, in distinction to fear, which is the emotional response to a consciously recognized and usually external threat or danger. May be regarded as pathological when it interferes with social and occupational functioning, achievement of…

A neuropsychological syndrome derived from defects in visual perception. Injury to both occipital lobes results in a state of cortical blindness. The patient is unable to process visual information and behaves in a fashion similar to someone who has experienced blindness due to traumatic injury to the eye. However, some patients deny their blindness and…

Conduct indicating indifference to another’s person or property; criminal behavior, dishonesty, or abuse are examples. In dsm-iv-tr, childhood or adolescent antisocial behavior and adult antisocial behavior (in contrast to antisocial personality disorder) are included as “other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.”  

The use of antiretroviral medications to treat adult human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection.  

Neuroleptic; Medications that ameliorate or diminish the symptoms of psychosis. The older medications in this class (introduced in the 1950s) are referred to as conventional antipsychotics; the newer medications (available since the 1990s) are known as atypical antipsychotics. In addition to their antipsychotic effects, many antipsychotic medications (particularly the new-generation atypical antipsychotics) also have properties…