Psychiatry

The medical specialty concerned with mental disorders and their assessment, mechanisms and treatment.

The use of mathematical models to investigate processes contributing to mental disorder and its treatment. Model fitting, parameter recovery and experimental intervention have different evidential roles; an estimated parameter is not automatically a diagnosis or a biological mechanism.

A United States public clinical-research and education center whose official diagnostic explainer distinguishes qualifying exposure from the remaining requirements for a PTSD diagnosis.

Psychological functioning and well-being considered across relevant domains and contexts. Absence of a particular diagnosis is informative but does not exhaust positive functioning, and success in one domain need not establish equal adaptation in another.

A clinically significant disturbance in psychological functioning associated with relevant distress or impairment. Diagnostic categories specify patterns for assessment and research; sharing a diagnosis does not establish identical causes or an identical treatment need.

A diagnostic grouping involving developmental differences in functioning. A label does not specify one neural lesion or a uniform cognitive profile.

A heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition involving characteristic differences in social communication and restricted or repetitive patterns of behaviour or interests. Sensory differences and varying support needs matter; an autistic individual’s empathy, language or mental health cannot be inferred from the label alone.

A developmental proposal linking differences in social orienting, reward or engagement to later social experience. Reduced observed participation cannot by itself distinguish reduced interest from sensory overload, anxiety or exclusion.

A proposal emphasizing differences in integrating information into wider context or in local/global processing style. It must make specific predictions rather than redescribe every difficulty as lack of context.

A proposal that dysfunction of action observation–execution matching explains autistic social differences. Its broad form requires direct evidence connecting the mechanism to the relevant behaviour, not merely atypical activation or an imitation score.

A clinical syndrome characterized by persistent difficulty discarding possessions and accumulation that compromises use of living space, with relevant distress or impairment. Differential assessment asks whether the appearance is better accounted for by another condition or context; excessive acquisition and insight can vary.

A disorder defined by a qualifying traumatic exposure together with the required subsequent symptom, duration and impairment criteria. The exposure requirement is a diagnostic condition, not a claim that exposure alone is sufficient or that every psychological disorder has the same prerequisite.^[ref]

The original 1996 account distinguishes verbally accessible memories from representations accessed automatically through situational cues. It aims to explain differences between deliberate narrative retrieval and sensory reliving. This functional distinction does not by itself prove two anatomically discrete memory stores.^[ref]

The experience that danger is present now, even when a reminder refers to a past event. The cognitive model of PTSD links this to appraisals and trauma-memory properties rather than simply the historical severity of the event.^[ref]

Involuntary recurrence of aspects of a traumatic experience, potentially including sensory impressions and a sense of current occurrence. It should be distinguished from deliberate recollection, rumination and a future-oriented image.

A cue associated with a traumatic experience that can prompt emotion or recollection. Its relation may be perceptual, situational or semantic, and need not be consciously recognised at the moment of response.

A form of reliving in which a past event or aspect of it is experienced with a sense of occurring in the present. A bodily conditioned response alone does not identify this phenomenology.

A grouping emphasizing outwardly directed behavioral difficulties. Diagnostic and dimensional outcomes should be specified rather than treated as interchangeable measures of a single disorder.

A grouping of disorders involving inwardly experienced distress, including several anxiety and depressive conditions. It is not one single diagnosis, and an intervention effect on an aggregate measure need not hold for every component.

A grouping of disorders involving manic or hypomanic episodes and, commonly, depressive episodes. Shared genetic liability with another diagnosis does not make the diagnoses interchangeable or establish an identical clinical course.

A psychiatric disorder involving characteristic disturbances of perception, belief, thought and functioning. Genetic evidence often concerns diagnostic liability rather than a single symptom mechanism or the exact timing of onset.

A disorder involving obsessions, compulsions or both with clinically significant distress, time cost or impairment. Compulsions may be overt or mental. Unwanted thoughts alone are insufficient to establish the disorder; their appraisal and associated responses matter.

Changes by relatives or carers that facilitate avoidance or rituals, such as supplying repeated reassurance or completing checks. Addressing accommodation collaboratively can support treatment without blaming the family for the origin of the disorder.

An excessive appraisal of personal responsibility for causing or preventing harm. It can make ordinary uncertainty feel unacceptable and motivate repeated checking or neutralization.^[ref]

A repetitive behavior or mental act performed according to rules or in response to an obsession, commonly to reduce distress or prevent a feared outcome. Covert neutralization can serve the same maintaining function as a visible ritual.

A covert mental act intended to cancel a threat, remove a thought's significance or prevent a feared outcome. Mental neutralization can preserve a compulsion cycle even when visible rituals have decreased.

A recurrent intrusive thought, image or urge experienced as unwanted, often associated with distress and attempts to suppress or neutralize it. An intrusive thought's content is not by itself a measure of intention or a substitute for assessment.

A diagnostic grouping characterized by persistent or excessive fear or anxiety and associated impairment. Specific disorders differ in their feared outcomes and behavioral patterns, so a shared maintaining process is a hypothesis to assess rather than a universal explanation.

Clinically significant fear and avoidance linked to a specified object or situation. Evidence from one phobia and age range does not establish the optimal exposure format for every anxiety disorder.

Persistent fear of social scrutiny or negative evaluation with relevant distress or impairment. Self-focused attention and safety behaviors can maintain threatening self-impressions while reducing access to corrective information.

An unfavorable mental representation of oneself that can be treated as if it were accurate evidence of how others perceive the person. Comparing an explicit prediction with external feedback can test that inference.

An internally generated representation of how one appears, often experienced as an observer's view. Its vividness or emotional force does not establish that it matches an independent observer's impression.

Thinking ahead about a feared encounter. It can become anxiety-maintaining when selective predictions and rehearsal preserve threat expectations instead of preparing flexible engagement.

Repetitive review of a social encounter, potentially privileging threatening interpretations and internal impressions over external evidence. Its occurrence and its causal contribution should be assessed separately.

A cognitive account in which feared evaluation promotes self-focused attention and an internally generated threatening impression of the self. Safety behaviors can distort an interaction and prevent disconfirmation; anticipatory and post-event processing can maintain the threat. Developed by David M. Clark and Adrian Wells, the account generates separate experimental questions about attention, behaviour and interpretation. Adolescent applicability requires developmentally valid measures, rather than assuming an adult self-report vocabulary.^[ref]

Leigh and colleagues compared counterbalanced conversations under combined internal-focus/safety behavior instructions versus external-focus/safety-reduction instructions. Self, partner and independent ratings in a symptom-selected sample provided experimental evidence for the combined manipulation. Because two processes changed together, this experiment does not by itself identify their separate causal effects or establish treatment efficacy in diagnosed patients.^[ref]

A disorder involving recurrent unexpected panic attacks and persistent concern or behavioral change related to them. Cognitive accounts examine how interpretations of bodily sensations contribute to recurrent fear; the diagnosis does not establish that every bodily symptom is psychologically caused.

An abrupt episode of intense fear or discomfort with associated symptoms. A panic attack is an event; panic disorder additionally involves a diagnostic pattern of recurrent unexpected attacks and persistent concern or behavioural change.

David M. Clark's account proposes that catastrophic interpretations of bodily sensations increase fear and arousal, intensifying sensations available for further threatening interpretation. Safety behaviors and avoidance can prevent disconfirmation. The theory distinguishes the presence of a sensation from the meaning assigned to it; a test should manipulate interpretation while measuring physiological input and subsequent fear.^[ref]

Marked fear and avoidance of situations where escape or obtaining help is perceived as difficult. It can occur with or without panic disorder; a specific feared consequence and its maintaining responses should be assessed.

A clinically assessed syndrome involving persistent depressed mood and/or anhedonia, with associated cognitive, motivational, sleep and bodily symptoms and functional impairment. Similar symptom profiles need not have one biological cause.

A family of proposals relating depression to reduced or dysregulated monoamine signalling. A simple universal deficiency account is stronger than the claim that a monoaminergic manipulation can alter symptoms. Drug-target engagement, therapeutic mediation and original disease cause are separate causal claims.

An experimental manipulation intended to reduce the availability of the serotonin precursor tryptophan. Effects in a previously treated remitted sample test dependence of that state on precursor availability; they do not directly measure a universal baseline serotonin deficit.

Reduced interest or pleasure. Anticipation, experienced pleasure, learning from outcomes and willingness to exert effort are distinguishable components, so one reward task does not measure them all.

A researcher whose work concerns child and adolescent anxiety or relevant cognitive mechanisms.^[ref]

Research contributions include the primary work cited below.^[ref]

Researcher whose contributions include the work cited below.^[ref]

Researcher whose contributions include the work cited below.^[ref]

Psychiatrist studying dopamine function in psychosis.

Researcher whose contributions include the work cited below.^[ref]

Researcher whose contributions include the work cited below.^[ref]

Researcher whose work includes Global pattern of experienced and anticipated discrimination against people with schizophrenia: a cross-sectional survey by Graham Thornicroft and others.

Researcher whose work includes Prevalence of hallucinations and their pathological associations in the general population by Maurice M. Ohayon.

Researcher whose work includes Compulsive hoarding: OCD symptom, distinct clinical syndrome, or both? by Alberto Pertusa and others.

Researcher whose work includes A randomized controlled trial of medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy for hypochondriasis by Brian A. Fallon and others.

Researcher whose work includes Cognitive-behaviour therapy for health anxiety in medical patients (CHAMP): a randomised controlled trial with outcomes to 5 years by Peter Tyrer and others.

A psychiatrist who helped develop and validate the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.^[ref]

A psychiatrist who helped develop and validate the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.^[ref]

A psychiatrist who tested early classroom interventions and followed later psychiatric and behavioral outcomes.^[ref]

A psychiatrist who compared psychological and medication augmentation for persistent obsessive-compulsive disorder.^[ref]

A psychiatrist and anatomical researcher whose name is attached to Gudden's ventral tegmental nucleus.^[ref]

A psychiatrist whose name is attached to Korsakoff syndrome.^[ref]

A psychiatrist associated with the historical study of amnesia and the Delay-Brion circuit.^[ref]

A psychiatrist associated with the historical study of amnesia and the Delay-Brion circuit.^[ref]

Researcher contributing to behavioural neuroscience.^[ref]

Researcher contributing to behavioural neuroscience.^[ref]

Researcher contributing to behavioural neuroscience.^[ref]