Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): a behavioral problem characterized by short attention span, restless movement, and impaired "learning" capacity. (Coon) Hypothesized that the majority of patients have a higher than normal number of “dopamine”  ‘transporter complexes,’ reducing the amount of freely available dopamine in the “synaptic cleft.” This leads to cognitive problems, including an inability to keep attention, to focus attention, and to perform organizational planning. Learning is impaired as a result, and behavior can be disruptive and may be defiant or aggressive. Highly genetic. The illness can carry on into adult life, but more commonly improves as the affected children mature. (OxfordMed) People with ADHD exhibit abnormally low functional coupling between (the) anterior cingulate cortex and (the) posterior cingulate cortex. (Sporns, 229) One of the most common mental disorders in children and adolescents, also affects an estimated 4.1 percent of adults, ages 18-44, in a given year. ADHD usually becomes evident in preschool or early elementary years. The median age of onset of ADHD is seven years, although the disorder can persist into adolescence and occasionally into adulthood. (NIMH, 2011) Editor's note - U.S. behavioral disorders prevalence taken from the Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health, 1999.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): the book published by the American Psychiatric Association that describes the specific symptoms and diagnostic guidelines for different psychological "disorders." (Hockenbury, 507) The standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States. Contains a listing of "diagnostic" criteria for every psychiatric disorder recognized by the U.S. healthcare system. DSM is used in both clinical settings (inpatient, outpatient, partial hospital, consultation-liaison, clinic, private practice, and primary care) as well as with "community" "populations." DSM is also a necessary tool for collecting and communicating accurate public health statistics about the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. (DSM) Essentially the “clinical psychologist’s” 'bible' -- the reference manual that allows the comparison of patient symptoms and diagnostic labels. Primarily descriptive in nature. (Bamford, 10/25/2010) Classification, definition and description of over 200 mental health disorders. Regularly updated. Emphasizes the description of symptoms and the course of a disorder rather than the “etiology” and treatment of disorders. (Cardwell, 74) Categorizes and distinguishes mental and behavioral conditions based on symptoms. However, different "syndromes" share symptoms, and the same disorder can have different causes in different people. (Lewis, 150)

Extreme Trauma: an event that produces intense feelings of horror and helplessness, such as a serous physical injury or threat of injury to yourself or to loved one. (Hockenbury, 516)

Hallucinations: “percepts” arising in the absence of any external reality— seeing things or hearing things that are not there. (Sacks6, 9) A strictly sensational form of consciousness, as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there. The object happens to be not there, that is all. (James2, 115) You are passive and helpless in the face of hallucinations: they happen to you, autonomously— they appear and disappear when they please, not when you please. (Sacks6, 11) Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or touches that a person believes to be real but are not real. (NCIt) Seem vividly real. (Hockenbury, 534) Many cultures regard hallucination, like dreams, as a special, privileged state of consciousness— one that is actively sought through spiritual practices, meditation, drugs, or solitude. But in modern Western culture, there is great stigma. Patients are often reluctant to admit to hallucinating, afraid that their friends and even their doctors will think they are losing their minds. (Sacks6, 16) Also referred to as ‘distorted perceptions.’

Auditory Hallucinations: typically hearing voices that are not there. Sometimes the voices are commenting on ongoing behavior, sometimes the voices are giving commands. The most common type of hallucinations for schizophrenics. (Bamford, 10/25/10) Most people who do hear voices, are not schizophrenic. (Sacks6, 97) Auditory hallucinations are very troubling: patients hear voices saying harshly critical, sometimes abusive things to them. The voices may cause them to harm themselves or others. (Kandel4, 85) The voices that are sometimes heard by people with schizophrenia tend to be accusing, threatening, jeering, or persecuting. By contrast, the voices hallucinated by the ‘normal’ are often quite unremarkable. Perhaps the commonest auditory hallucination is hearing one’s own name spoken— either by a familiar voice or an anonymous one. (Sacks6, 99-100) Some auditory hallucinations consist of little more than odd noises. Probably the most common of these are classified as “tinnitus.” Hearing noises, hummings, mutterings, twittering, rappings, rustlings, ringings, muffled voices, is commonly associated with hearing problems, and this may be aggravated by many factors, including “delirium,” “dementia,” “toxins,” or “stress.” (Sacks6, 110)

Musical Hallucinations: a great many people ‘hear’ only music or musical phrases. Musical hallucinations may arise from a “stroke,” a “tumor,” an “aneurysm,” an “infectious disease,” a neurodegenerative process, or toxic or “metabolic” disturbances.” Hallucinations in such situations usually disappear as soon as the provocative cause is treated or subsides. Sometimes (musical hallucinations) are soft, sometimes disturbingly loud. Most people who get musical hallucinations are elderly and somewhat deaf. There are certain characteristics common to all of them. They… seem to emanate from an external source. (They) often appear suddenly, with no apparent trigger. Some people have (them) virtually nonstop, while others have them only intermittently. The hallucinated music is usually familiar (though not always liked). It may be vocal or instrumental, classical or popular, but it was most often music heard in the patient’s early years. It can be very detailed, so that every note is a piece, every instrument in an orchestra, is distinctly heard. Such detail and accuracy is often astonishing to the hallucinator, who may be scarcely able, normally, to hold a simple tune in his/her head. Some patients may sing along with their musical hallucinations; others ignore them— it takes no difference. Musical hallucinations continue on their own way, irrespective of whether one attends to them or not. (Sacks6, 111-116)

Olfactory Hallucinations: some people hallucinate a particular smell, which may be influenced by context or suggestion. Some hallucinated smells may be impossible to describe because they are different from anything ever experienced in the real world, and evoke no memories or associations. (Sacks6, 90-92)

Visual Hallucinations: not uncommon in those with blindness or impaired sight. They are not ‘psychiatric’ but a reaction of the brain to the loss of eyesight. There is… a wide array, a whole spectrum, of visual disturbances which can occur when vision is lost or compromised. Can also occur when the damage lies not in the eye itself but higher up in the visual system, (for example) in the “occipital lobes.” (Sacks6, 21,38) (One patient) has dozens of hallucinations every day, and has had them, almost nonstop, for… six years. (Sacks6, 43)

Complex Hallucinations: (those involving) people, animals, or scenes. It is typical to see faces, though they are almost never familiar. (a patient described) ‘a burly ship captain. his face was grey, the cheeks rather chubby, bright eyes and a decidedly bulbous nose. He was no one I had ever seen before. He gazed at me with a benign, unblinking, and altogether incurious expression.’ (Sacks6, 30,32)

Simple Hallucinations: (those involving) shapes and colors, sometimes patterns, but not formed images or scenes. Includes ‘text hallucinations.’ (For example), letters, lines of print, musical notes, numerals, mathematical symbols, or other types of notation. (Sacks6, 30,33)

Inferiority Complex: a general sense of inadequacy, weakness, and helplessness. People with an inferiority complex are often unable to strive for mastery and self-improvement. Term coined by Alfred Adler. (Hockenbury, 409)

Learned Helplessness: an inability to control the aversive stimuli that are coming at you. (MedinaBFP, 28) Learned inability to overcome obstacles or to avoid "punishment"; learned passivity and inaction to aversive stimuli. (Coon, 513) The tendency for an "organism" to give up trying to avoid or escape from an unpleasant "stimulus" because in the past all their attempts at so doing had been frustrated. (Cardwell, 140) A phenomenon in which exposure to inescapable and uncontrollable aversive events produces passive behavior. (Hockenbury, 205)

Medical Model of Abnormal Behavior: premise that mental disorders are similar to physical disorders. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Neurosis: an outdated term once used to refer, as a group, to “anxiety disorders,”  “somatoform disorders,”  “dissociative disorders,”  and some forms of “depression.” (Coon, 537) Disorders in which the symptoms are distressing to the individual and recognized by him or her as being unacceptable. Social relationships may be greatly affected but usually remain within acceptable limits. The disturbance is relatively enduring or recurrent without treatment. (NCIt)

Obsessions: repeated, intrusive, and uncontrollable irrational thoughts or mental images that cause extreme anxiety and distress. (Hockenbury, 518) Irrational thoughts and images that invade a person’s conscious mind and appear uncontrollable to the person experiencing them. Trying to ignore or dismiss obsessive thoughts creates even more anxiety. (Cardwell, 167)

Psychopathy: primarily an emotional disorder with two defining features: antisocial behavior and lack of empathy for people. The first can result in horrendous crimes, the second in lack of remorse for those crimes. Psychopaths work very hard to seem normal, to blend in. Using brain imaging… of prisoners, many of whom are psychopathic, as indicated by their scores on a standardized checklist, Kent Kiehl found that psychopaths had more gray matter in and around the “limbic system.” The limbic system comprises the regions of the brain involved in how we process emotions. Moreover, the neural circuitry connecting the limbic system to the frontal lobes of the cortex is disrupted in psychopathic inmates. Several studies have found less activity in those neural circuits when psychopathic prisoners engage in emotional processing and moral decision making. (Kandel4, 194-195)

Psychosis: a withdrawal from reality marked by "hallucinations" and "delusions," disturbed thought and emotions, and personality disorganization. (Coon, 549) Psychoses in general are characterized by a break from reality, and tend to be one of the most severe types of psychological disorders. (Bamford, 10/25/10) Adjective - 'psychotic.'

Somatoform Disorders: persistent, recurring complaints of bodily symptoms that have no physical or medical basis. (Hockenbury, 511) Physical symptoms that mimic disease or injury for which there is no identifiable physical cause. (Coon, 537) Disturbances in physiological functions that are primarily psychological in nature. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Body Dysmorphic Disorder: exaggerated concern and preoccupation about minor or imagined defects in appearance. (Hockenbury, 511) Belief that certain parts of your body are grotesque. (Blakeslee, 53, 212)

Conversion Disorder: a bodily symptom that mimics a physical disability but is actually caused by "anxiety" or emotional distress. (Coon, 547) A condition in which you show psychological "stress" in physical ways. Usually appears suddenly after a stressful event. For example, your leg may become paralyzed after falling from a horse even though you weren't hurt. Conversion disorder signs and symptoms appear with no underlying physical cause, and you can't control them. Signs and symptoms of conversion disorder typically affect your movement or your senses, such as the ability to walk, swallow, see or hear. Conversion disorder symptoms can be severe, but most people get better within a few weeks. (Mayo) For conversion blindness, the individual is unable to see, yet there is no medical evidence that would explain the loss of visual functioning. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Hypochondria: disorder characterized by a persistent concern with personal health, and the misperception that one is sick when one is actually healthy. (Bamford, 10/25/10) Preoccupation with imagined diseases based on the person’s misinterpretation of bodily symptoms or functions. (Hockenbury, 511) Also referred to as 'hypochondriasis,'  'health phobia,' or 'health anxiety."

Superiority Complex: people who overcompensate for their feelings of inferiority. Behaviors caused by a superiority complex might include exaggerating one’s accomplishments and importance in an effort to cover up weaknesses and deny the reality of one’s limitations. Term coined by Alfred Adler. (Hockenbury, 409)

Symptom(s): a physical or mental “phenomenon,” circumstance, or change of condition arising from and accompanying a disorder and constituting evidence of it; a characteristic sign of a particular “disease.” (Oxford) In its general usage within psychology, this is some event which is taken to indicate the existence of an underlying disorder. (Cardwell, 245)

Deviance: the patient displays behavior that conflicts with societal or cultural norms. Thus, the behavior is experienced as unusual by observers, and defies normal standards for behavior. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Euphoria: a strong feeling of well-being, cheerfulness, and optimism, especially one based on overconfidence or overoptimism; a “mood” marked by this, as symptomatic of a mental illness or the influence of drugs. (Oxford) An exaggerated feeling of physical and emotional well-being not consonant with apparent stimuli or events; usually of psychologic origin, but also seen in organic brain disease and toxic states. (MeSH) Adjective - 'euphoric.'

Lanugo: the development of fine, blonde, downy hair that is almost fur-like in appearance. Symptom of Anorexia Nervosa. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Maladaptive: disruptive. (Hockenbury, 512)

Maladaptive Behavior: behavior that interferes with normal functioning. Oftentimes, the maladaptive behavior interferes with appropriate social, academic, or occupational function. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Mania: an emotional state characterized by intense, but more often than not inappropriate, elation, resulting in hyperactivity, distractibility, excessive talkativeness and disrupted (racing) thought processes. (Cardwell, 146)

Personal Distress: the patient reports feeling anxious, disturbed, conflicted, etc. (Bamford, 10/25/10)

Syndrome: a group of symptoms or “pathological” signs which consistently occur together, especially with an unknown cause. (Oxford)