This document defines and describes over 70 psychiatric and psychological terms, including: - Abreaction, which is the vivid relieving of repressed memories and emotions from a past event. - Agnosia, the inability to recognize or name objects despite intact sensory abilities. - Alogia, a lack of any real meaning or substance in what the client says. - Amnestic Disorder, characterized by a disturbance in memory resulting from a medical condition or substance use. - Anxiety, a vague feeling of dread or apprehension that can have behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and physical symptoms.

1. PSYCHIATRIC
TERMINOLOGIES
Shashi Prabha
MBA (Hospital Administration)
MSc. II Yr Psychiatric Nursing

2. TERMS
 Abreaction : It is a process of vividly relieving repressed memories and
emotions related to past event.
 Abstract thinking : Ability to make associations or interpretations about a
situation or comment.
 Acceptance : Avoiding judgments of the person, no matter what the behavior.
 Affect : The outward expression of the client’s emotional state.
 Agnosia : Inability to recognize or name objects despite intact sensory
abilities.
 Agoraphobia : Fear of being outside.
 Akathisia : Intense need to move about ; characterized by restless
movement, pacing, inability to remain still, and the client’s report of inner
restlessness.

3.  Alexithymia : Difficulty identifying and expressing feelings.
 Alogia : A lack of any real meaning or substance in what the client says.
 Amnestic Disorder : Characterized by a disturbance in memory that results
directly from the physiologic effects of a general medical condition or from
the persisting effects of a substance such as alcohol or other drugs.
 Anergia : Lack of energy.
 Anhedonia : Having no pleasure or joy in life ; losing any sense of pleasure
from activities formerly enjoyed.
 Anxiety : A vague feeling of dread or apprehension; it is a response to
external or internal stimuli that can have behavioral,emotional,cognitive,and
physical symptoms.
 Aphasia : Deterioration of language function.
 Apraxia : Impaired ability to execute motor functions despite intact motor
abilities.

4.  Autistic thinking : Preoccupations totally removing a person from reality.
 Automatic obedience : The patient obeys every command though he has first
been told not to do so.
 Automatism : Undirected behavior that is not consciously controlled , as seen
in complex partial seizures.
 Blunted affect : A reduction in emotional experience.
 Bulimia Nervosa : Eating disorder characterized by periods of significant
overeating and inappropriate methods of compensating for the overeating to
prevent weight gain such as self induced vomiting.
 Cataplexy : Temporary loss of muscle tone and weakness precipitated by a
variety of emotional states.
 Catharsis : The expression of ideas,thoughts and suppressed material
accompanied by an appropriate emotional response that produces a state of
relief in the patient.

5.  Circumstantiality : A pattern of communication that is demonstrated by the
speaker’s inclusion of many irrelevant and unnecessary details in his speech
before he is able to come to the point.
 Clang association : Client uses two words with a similar sound, i.e his choice
of words is determined by their sound and not by their meaning , which often
reduces the intelligibility of speech.
 Concrete thinking : Thought processes are focused on specifics rather than
generalizations.
 Confabulation : The unconscious filling of memory gaps by imagined or untrue
experiences due to memory impairment.
 Conversion : Process by which a psychological thought, event , or memory is
transferred to a physical or sensory symptom.
 Craving : Strong inner drive to use a substance in situations of substance
dependence.
 Dejavu : A subjective feeling that an experience, which is occurring for the
first time, has been experienced before.

6.  Delirium : State of mental confusion and excitement that happens in a short
period of time and is characterized by disorientation for time and place .
 Delusion : A false, unshakeable belief, which is not amenable to reasoning and
is not in keeping with the patient’s socio – cultural and educational
background.
 Derealization : A subjective sense that the environment is strange or unreal.
 Dyslexia : Learning disorder in the reading domain.
 Dystonia : Muscle rigidity that affects posture, gait, eye movements.
 Echolalia : Pathological repetition by imitation of the speech of another.
 Echopraxia : Pathological repetition by imitation of the behavior of another.
 Encopresis : Involuntary passage of feces in inappropriate places after age of
voluntary control has been established.
 Enuresis : Involuntary passage of urine after age of voluntary control has been
established.

7.  Euphoria : Excessive feeling of happiness or elation.
 Eustress : Positive and motivating stress shown by one’s confidence in the
ability to master a challenge or stressor.
 Flat affect : Absence or near absence of any sign of affective expression,voice
monotonous, face immobile.
 Fugue : Dissociative disorder in which there is an inability to recall one’s past
or identity accompanied by sudden and unexpected travel away from home.
 Generalized amnesia : Inability to recall important personal information
usually of a traumatic or stressful nature that is too extensive to be explained
by ordinary forgetfulness.
 Hallucination : A false sensory perception in the absence of an actual external
stimulus.
 Hypnosia : A treatment for disorders brought on by repressed anxiety.
 Illusion : The misinterpretation of a real, external sensory experience.

8.  Mania : A type of bipolar disorder in which the predominant mood is elevated,
expansive, or irritable.
 Mannerism : Ingrained, habitual involuntary movement.
 Milieu : Environment or setting.
 Mood : Emotion that is prolonged to the point that it colors a person’s entire
psychological thinking.
 Neologism : A word newly coined or an everyday word used in a special way,
not readily understood by others.
 Oedipus complex : Attachment of the child to the parent of the opposite sex,
accompanied by envious feeling towards the parent of the same sex.
 Paralalia : Repetitious, sometimes continuous repetition of one word.
 Perseveration : Persistent repetition of words or themes beyond the point of
relevance.

9.  Stupor : A state in which the individual does not react to his surroundings and
appears to be unaware of them.
 Stuttering : Repetitive or prolonged sounds or syllables with pauses and
monosyllabic broken words.
 Tangentiality : A form of thinking/speech in which the client tends to wander
away from the intended point, and never returning to the original idea.
 Verbigeration : Senseless repetition of some words or phrases over and over
again.
 Waxy flexibility : A condition by which the individual with schizophrenia
passively yields all movable parts of the body to any efforts made at placing
them in certain positions.
 Word salad : Meaningless and incoherent mixture of words or phrases.