Borderline Personality Disorder
A personality disorder marked by a pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. (DSM-IV)
Personality Assessment
The determination and evaluation of personality attributes by interviews, observations, tests, or scales. Articles concerning personality measurement are considered to be within scope of this term.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder
A personality disorder in which there are oddities of thought (magical thinking, paranoid ideation, suspiciousness), perception (illusions, depersonalization), speech (digressive, vague, overelaborate), and behavior (inappropriate affect in social interactions, frequently social isolation) that are not severe enough to characterize schizophrenia.
Self-Injurious Behavior
Behavior in which persons hurt or harm themselves without the motive of suicide or of sexual deviation.
Personality Inventory
Antisocial Personality Disorder
A personality disorder whose essential feature is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood. The individual must be at least age 18 and must have a history of some symptoms of CONDUCT DISORDER before age 15. (From DSM-IV, 1994)
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Categorical classification of MENTAL DISORDERS based on criteria sets with defining features. It is produced by the American Psychiatric Association. (DSM-IV, page xxii)
Paranoid Personality Disorder
A personality disorder characterized by the avoidance of accepting deserved blame and an unwarranted view of others as malevolent. The latter is expressed as suspiciousness, hypersensitivity, and mistrust.
Personality Tests
Standardized objective tests designed to facilitate the evaluation of personality.
Psychiatric Status Rating Scales
Dependent Personality Disorder
A personality disorder characterized by a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of that leads to submissive and clinging behavior and fears of separation, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. (From DSM-IV, 1994)
Impulsive Behavior
Countertransference (Psychology)
Compulsive Personality Disorder
Disorder characterized by an emotionally constricted manner that is unduly conventional, serious, formal, and stingy, by preoccupation with trivial details, rules, order, organization, schedules, and lists, by stubborn insistence on having things one's own way without regard for the effects on others, by poor interpersonal relationships, and by indecisiveness due to fear of making mistakes.
Interview, Psychological
Psychotherapy
Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder
A personality disorder characterized by an indirect resistance to demands for adequate social and occupational performance; anger and opposition to authority and the expectations of others that is expressed covertly by obstructionism, procrastination, stubbornness, dawdling, forgetfulness, and intentional inefficiency. (Dorland, 27th ed)
Transference (Psychology)
Identification (Psychology)
A process by which an individual unconsciously endeavors to pattern himself after another. This process is also important in the development of the personality, particularly the superego or conscience, which is modeled largely on the behavior of adult significant others.
Dissociative Disorders
Impulse Control Disorders
Disorders whose essential features are the failure to resist an impulse, drive, or temptation to perform an act that is harmful to the individual or to others. Individuals experience an increased sense of tension prior to the act and pleasure, gratification or release of tension at the time of committing the act.
Psychoanalytic Therapy
A form of psychiatric treatment, based on Freudian principles, which seeks to eliminate or diminish the undesirable effects of unconscious conflicts by making the patient aware of their existence, origin, and inappropriate expression in current emotions and behavior.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Conceptual system developed by Freud and his followers in which unconscious motivations are considered to shape normal and abnormal personality development and behavior.
Identity Crisis
Personal Construct Theory
A psychological theory based on dimensions or categories used by a given person in describing or explaining the personality and behavior of others or of himself. The basic idea is that different people will use consistently different categories. The theory was formulated in the fifties by George Kelly. Two tests devised by him are the role construct repertory test and the repertory grid test. (From Stuart Sutherland, The International Dictionary of Psychology, 1989)
Emotions
Crisis Intervention
Brief therapeutic approach which is ameliorative rather than curative of acute psychiatric emergencies. Used in contexts such as emergency rooms of psychiatric or general hospitals, or in the home or place of crisis occurrence, this treatment approach focuses on interpersonal and intrapsychic factors and environmental modification. (APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, 7th ed)
Comorbidity
The presence of co-existing or additional diseases with reference to an initial diagnosis or with reference to the index condition that is the subject of study. Comorbidity may affect the ability of affected individuals to function and also their survival; it may be used as a prognostic indicator for length of hospital stay, cost factors, and outcome or survival.
Aggression
Behavior which may be manifested by destructive and attacking action which is verbal or physical, by covert attitudes of hostility or by obstructionism.
Affective Symptoms
Schizoid Personality Disorder
A personality disorder manifested by a profound defect in the ability to form social relationships, no desire for social involvement, and an indifference to praise or criticism.
Bipolar Disorder
Social Adjustment
Mental Disorders
Affect
Models, Psychological
Temperament
Suicidal Ideation
A risk factor for suicide attempts and completions, it is the most common of all suicidal behavior, but only a minority of ideators engage in overt self-harm.
Hostility
Tendency to feel anger toward and to seek to inflict harm upon a person or group.
Depressive Disorder, Major
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
A class of traumatic stress disorders with symptoms that last more than one month. There are various forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depending on the time of onset and the duration of these stress symptoms. In the acute form, the duration of the symptoms is between 1 to 3 months. In the chronic form, symptoms last more than 3 months. With delayed onset, symptoms develop more than 6 months after the traumatic event.
Histrionic Personality Disorder
A personality disorder characterized by overly reactive and intensely expressed or overly dramatic behavior, proneness to exaggeration, emotional excitability, and disturbances in interpersonal relationships.
Diagnosis, Dual (Psychiatry)
Paranoid Behavior
Behavior exhibited by individuals who are overly suspicious, but without the constellation of symptoms characteristic of paranoid personality disorder or paranoid type of schizophrenia.
Human Characteristics
Self Mutilation
Child Abuse
Outpatients
Psychotherapy, Psychodynamic
Forms of PSYCHOTHERAPY falling within or deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition, that view individuals as reacting to unconscious forces (e.g., motivation, drive), that focus on processes of change and development, and that place a premium on self understanding and making meaning of what is unconscious.
Ego
The conscious portion of the personality structure which serves to mediate between the demands of the primitive instinctual drives, (the id), of internalized parental and social prohibitions or the conscience, (the superego), and of reality.
Galvanic Skin Response
Limbic System
A set of forebrain structures common to all mammals that is defined functionally and anatomically. It is implicated in the higher integration of visceral, olfactory, and somatic information as well as homeostatic responses including fundamental survival behaviors (feeding, mating, emotion). For most authors, it includes the AMYGDALA; EPITHALAMUS; GYRUS CINGULI; hippocampal formation (see HIPPOCAMPUS); HYPOTHALAMUS; PARAHIPPOCAMPAL GYRUS; SEPTAL NUCLEI; anterior nuclear group of thalamus, and portions of the basal ganglia. (Parent, Carpenter's Human Neuroanatomy, 9th ed, p744; NeuroNames, http://rprcsgi.rprc.washington.edu/neuronames/index.html (September 2, 1998)).
Sociometric Techniques
Anxiety, Separation
Cognitive Therapy
A direct form of psychotherapy based on the interpretation of situations (cognitive structure of experiences) that determine how an individual feels and behaves. It is based on the premise that cognition, the process of acquiring knowledge and forming beliefs, is a primary determinant of mood and behavior. The therapy uses behavioral and verbal techniques to identify and correct negative thinking that is at the root of the aberrant behavior.
Longitudinal Studies
Severity of Illness Index
Follow-Up Studies
Neurotic Disorders
Depressive Disorder
Diseases in Twins
Disorders affecting TWINS, one or both, at any age.
Questionnaires
Self Report
Life Change Events
Eating Disorders
Anxiety
Feeling or emotion of dread, apprehension, and impending disaster but not disabling as with ANXIETY DISORDERS.
Psychotherapy, Group
Anger
Emergency Services, Psychiatric
Anxiety Disorders
Persistent and disabling ANXIETY.
Twins
Behavior Therapy
Reproducibility of Results
The statistical reproducibility of measurements (often in a clinical context), including the testing of instrumentation or techniques to obtain reproducible results. The concept includes reproducibility of physiological measurements, which may be used to develop rules to assess probability or prognosis, or response to a stimulus; reproducibility of occurrence of a condition; and reproducibility of experimental results.
Treatment Outcome
Psychotropic Drugs
Character
In current usage, approximately equivalent to personality. The sum of the relatively fixed personality traits and habitual modes of response of an individual.
Amygdala
Almond-shaped group of basal nuclei anterior to the INFERIOR HORN OF THE LATERAL VENTRICLE of the TEMPORAL LOBE. The amygdala is part of the limbic system.
Analysis of Variance
Case-Control Studies
Studies which start with the identification of persons with a disease of interest and a control (comparison, referent) group without the disease. The relationship of an attribute to the disease is examined by comparing diseased and non-diseased persons with regard to the frequency or levels of the attribute in each group.
Community Mental Health Services
Prevalence
Gyrus Cinguli
One of the convolutions on the medial surface of the CEREBRAL HEMISPHERES. It surrounds the rostral part of the brain and CORPUS CALLOSUM and forms part of the LIMBIC SYSTEM.
Alcoholism
A primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. Each of these symptoms may be continuous or periodic. (Morse & Flavin for the Joint Commission of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and the American Society of Addiction Medicine to Study the Definition and Criteria for the Diagnosis of Alcoholism: in JAMA 1992;268:1012-4)