Learn About Mental Health
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- Colorado Department of Health
- Colorado Division of Mental Health
- University of Colorado Hospital Mental Health
- Denver Health
Affective Disorder
Same as “Mood Disorder,” defined below.
Agoraphobia
Fear of being in situations from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing, or help might be difficult to obtain, in the event that one should have a panic attack or should feel an acute desire to leave. Such situations often include being in large crowds or “open spaces” (such as shopping malls or stadiums), using public transportation, driving on the freeway, eating in restaurants, or, in severe cases of agoraphobia, going anywhere outside one's own home. Agoraphobia usually occurs in response to having panic attacks, but it can also develop without panic attacks.
Anxiety Disorders
Conditions in which anxiety disrupts ordinary functioning or causes significant distress to the sufferer. “Anxiety” refers to one's response to any perceived threat of danger (real or imagined), and includes physical (such as increased heart rate and shortness of breath), mental (attention drawn to the perceived threat), and behavioral (avoidance or escape) components. Anxiety itself is a normal and healthy part of human experience that signals a need to protect oneself from potential dangers; it only becomes dysfunctional when it is overly frequent or intense, occurs repeatedly in response to situations that are not really dangerous, and/or disrupts the ordinary functioning and enjoyment of one's life.
Behavioral Medicine
Application of principles of behavior therapy to the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of medical disorders; applies to such areas as stress prevention and reduction, pediatric and adult patient management and compliance, pain control, and life-style modification. Biofeedback, relaxation training, behavior therapy, and hypnosis are important modalities.
Behaviorism
School of psychological thought founded by John B. Watson that regards only measurable and observable behavior as the appropriate subject matter for human psychology; in its strictest form, behaviorism holds that human behavior can be described in terms of principles that do not require consideration of unobservable mental events, such as ideas and emotions. See also behavior therapy.
Behavior Therapy
Psychological treatment modality that focuses on overt and objectively observable behavior and uses various conditioning techniques derived from learning theory to directly modify the patient's behavior. Behavior therapy techniques include assertiveness training, systematic desensitization, exposure and response prevention, and modifying the environment and activity schedules to improve mood and functioning. Behavior therapy is often used in conjunction with cognitive therapy.
Biofeedback
Provision of information to a person regarding one or more physiological processes in an effort to enable the person to gain some element of voluntary control over bodily functions that normally operate outside of consciousness.
Bipolar Disorder
Formerly called “Manic-Depressive Illness,” a mood disorder characterized by severe alterations in mood which are usually episodic and recurrent. At least one mood episode must be of the “manic” type, in which a person experiences either extreme elevation in mood (euphoria) and energy level, or extreme agitation and irritability. In addition, episodes of depressed mood are usually present.
Borderline Personality Disorder
Personality disorder marked by instability in various areas, impulsiveness, suicidal acts, self-mutilations, identity problems, and feelings of emptiness or boredom.
Client-Centered Psychotherapy
Nondirective form of psychotherapy, originated by Carl Rogers, in which the therapeutic process focuses on the patient's own thinking and feeling which the therapist merely helps to clarify through understanding and empathy; developed as a reaction against the authoritativeness and interpretation of the more traditional psychotherapies.
Cognitive Therapy
Structured and directive form of therapy that emphasizes the impact of clients' own thoughts about themselves, the world, and the future on their emotional experience and functioning. Cognitive therapy focuses on modifying thinking in order to improve mood, relationships, and general functioning.
Countertransference
Conscious or unconscious emotional response of the therapist to the patient; determined by the therapist's inner needs, rather than by the patient's needs, and may reinforce the patient's earlier traumatic history if not checked by the therapist. See also transference.
Depression
Mental state characterized by feelings of sadness, loneliness, despair, low self-esteem, and self-reproach; accompanying signs include psychomotor retardation or at times agitation, withdrawal from interpersonal contact, and vegetative symptoms such as insomnia and loss of appetite. The term refers either to a mood that is so characterized or to a mood disorder.
Dissociative Disorder
Mental disorders characterized by a sudden temporary alteration in consciousness, identity, or motor behavior. They include psychogenic amnesia, psychogenic fugue, multiple personality disorder, and depersonalization disorder.
DSM - IV
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Published by the American Psychiatric Association, this is a widely used listing of all psychiatric diagnoses.
Exposure and Response Prevention
Form of behavior therapy in which clients intentionally approach situations (places, specific animals or insects, body sensations, or thoughts, for example) that make them feel fearful (the “exposure”) without leaving the situation or engaging in any avoidance behaviors. The approach may be done gradually (“graduated exposure”) or suddenly (“flooding”). The exposures are repeated until the person no longer feels fearful in the situation.
Family Therapy
Treatment of more than one member of a family in the same session; family relationships and processes are explored as potential causes of mental disorder in one or more of the family members.
Gender Identity Disorder
Psychosexual disorder in which a person feels discomfort with and inappropriateness of his or her biological sex, with a marked preference for the clothing and activities of the opposite sex and/or repudiation of the sex organs.
Insight-Oriented Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy based on the principles of psychoanalysis in which persons develop a conscious awareness and understanding of their own psychodynamics and symptoms of maladaptive behavior. There is greater emphasis on day-to-day reality issues and a lesser emphasis on the development of transference issues than in psychoanalysis. See also psychoanalysis.
Manic-Depressive Illness
See “Bipolar Disorder.”
Mood Disorders
Any of a group of clinical conditions characterized by a disturbance of mood (the internal emotional state of an individual), a loss of sense of control, and a subjective experience of great distress; mood disorders include depression and mania.
Panic Attack
An acute, intense rise in anxiety that is experienced as overwhelming and accompanied by feelings of impending doom. During a panic attack, one may experience heart racing or pounding, shortness of breath, numbness or tingling, nausea, several other physiological symptoms, and fear of dying or losing control of one's mind.
Panic Disorder
Anxiety disorder characterized by attacks of acute intense anxiety, with or without agoraphobia.
Personality Disorder
Mental disorder characterized by inflexible, deeply ingrained, maladaptive patterns of adjustment to life that cause either subjective distress or significant impairment of adaptive functioning; manifestations are generally recognizable in adolescence or earlier. Currently diagnosed personality disorders include paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive.
Psychoanalysis
Theory of human mental phenomena and behavior, a method of psychic investigation and research, and a form of psychotherapy originally formulated by Sigmund Freud. As a technique for exploring the mental processes, psychoanalysis includes the use of free association and the analysis and interpretation of dreams, resistances, and transferences. As a form of psychotherapy, it uses the investigative technique, guided by Freud's libido and instinct theories and by ego psychology, to gain insight into a person's unconscious motivations, conflicts, and symbols and thus to effect a change in maladaptive behavior.
Psychodynamics
Science of mental forces and motivations that influence human behavior and mental activity; the role of unconscious motivation in the causation of human behavior is emphasized.
Psychosis
Mental disorder in which a person's thoughts, affective response, ability to recognize reality, and ability to communicate and relate to others are sufficiently impaired to grossly interfere with his or her capacity to deal with reality. Classical characteristics of psychosis include hallucinations (alterations in sensory perception, usually involving hearing voices or seeing images that do not exist) and delusions (beliefs about events or circumstances that have no basis in reality)
Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement refers to the process in which certain consequences of behavior increase the probability that the behavior will occur again. For example, if one receives attention for complaints of being sick, then complains of illness more often, the attention would be considered a positive reinforcer of the illness complaints. Negative reinforcement describes that process by which behavior that leads to the removal of an unpleasant event strengthens that behavior. For example, if one feels anxious in social situations and leaving these situations takes away the anxiety, then leaving the situations may happen more often because it is “negatively reinforced” by the relief from anxiety. Stimuli that possess inherent reinforcing characteristics are called primary reinforcers, e.g., food. Stimuli that acquire reinforcing characteristics by being paired with primary reinforcers are called conditioned reinforcers, e.g., money.
Schizophrenia
A psychotic mental disorder of unknown etiology characterized by disturbances in thinking, mood, and behavior. The thinking disturbance is manifested by a distortion of reality, sometimes with delusions and hallucinations, accompanied by a fragmentation of associations that results in characteristic disturbances of speech; the mood disturbance includes ambivalence and inappropriate or constricted affective responses; the behavior disturbance may be manifested by apathetic withdrawal or bizarre activity. Types of schizophrenia include disorganized, catatonic, paranoid, undifferentiated, and residual.
Sexual Dysfunction
Class of sexual disorders characterized by inhibitions in sexual desire or the psychophysiologic changes that characterize the sexual response cycle.
Supportive Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy that seeks to strengthen patients' defenses and to provide them with reassurance, rather than to probe deeply into their conflicts.
Systematic Desensitization
Form of behavior therapy in which anxiety-evoking stimuli are presented to a patient in a state of deep muscle relaxation in an attempt to weaken the bond between the stimuli and the anxiety; particularly used in the treatment of phobias.
Transference
Unconscious tendency of a person to assign to others in the present and immediate environment those feelings and attitudes originally linked with significant figures in the person's early life, e.g., identification of the therapist with a parent; the transference may be negative (hostile) or positive (affectionate). Analysis of transference phenomena is used as a major therapeutic tool in both individual and group therapy to help patients gain insight into their behavior and its origins. See also "countertransference".
Definitions from the Ohio Psychological Association http://www.ohpsych.org/Public/glossary.htm