Psychiatry

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

A severe psychiatric presentation following childbirth that requires urgent specialist assessment; historical “puerperal insanity” encompassed more than one modern syndrome.

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.

Suicide is death resulting from self-directed injurious behavior undertaken with intent to die. A nonfatal attempt and suicidal ideation are distinct outcomes and should not be combined into a single research variable.^[ref]

Suicide has multiple interacting contributors. An association with a mental disorder does not mean that every person with that diagnosis has the same risk or that a death can be explained from one diagnostic label.^[ref]

Suicidal ideation refers to thoughts about or consideration of suicide. Thoughts, intent and behavior are related but distinct measurements; the presence of one does not uniquely specify the others.^[ref]

In research, the wording of questions and the period being assessed affect what is counted. A lifetime measure and a report about the past week answer different questions and should not be treated as interchangeable prevalence estimates.

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 depressive disorder is a diagnostic category involving persistent or recurring disturbances of mood and related functioning, commonly including low mood or loss of interest. Major depressive disorder is one specific condition in that broader grouping.

An isolated sad mood does not by itself establish a depressive disorder. Duration, accompanying changes and functional effects matter, while similar symptoms can occur in different conditions.^[ref]

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.

Oppositional defiant disorder is a pattern of persistent irritability, argumentative or defiant behavior, or vindictiveness that exceeds what is developmentally expected and causes significant difficulty. Occasional disagreement or resistance alone is insufficient to define the disorder.

It is distinct from conduct disorder, whose defining pattern involves serious violations of others' rights or major rules. Describing the pattern and context is more informative than treating either diagnosis as a judgment of character.^[ref]

Conduct disorder is a persistent pattern of behavior involving serious violations of others' rights or major age-appropriate rules. The clinical definition requires more than occasional misbehavior or a disagreement with an adult.

Its distinction from oppositional defiant disorder concerns the type and severity of the pattern, not an inevitable progression from one diagnosis to another. Developmental context and accompanying difficulties remain relevant.^[ref]

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.

Antisocial personality disorder is a diagnostic construct describing an enduring adult pattern of disregard for others' rights, associated with behaviors such as deceitfulness, irresponsibility or impulsivity under the relevant diagnostic system.

The word antisocial here does not mean simply preferring solitude. Nor does a diagnostic label establish one uniform cause or justify inferring a particular individual's future behavior from the label alone.^[ref]

A substance use disorder involves a pattern of substance use associated with impaired control, harmful consequences or disruption of everyday functioning. It can vary in severity and can coexist with other mental disorders.^[ref]

Drug tolerance and Drug withdrawal are physiological concepts that may be relevant, but neither should be used alone as a complete account of the disorder. The pattern of use and its effects on a person's life are separate parts of the assessment.

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 clinical syndrome involving marked mood and activity change. It must be distinguished from delirium and substance- or illness-related behavioural disturbance.

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.

Separation anxiety disorder involves excessive, developmentally inappropriate anxiety about separation from significant attachment figures, with clinically meaningful distress or impairment. It differs from an expected transient separation response at some developmental stages.

Avoidance of a setting can have several possible explanations. Establishing that the anxiety concerns separation helps distinguish this pattern from fear of social evaluation or a specific external threat.

Generalized anxiety disorder involves persistent, excessive worry across several areas of life that is difficult to control and interferes with functioning. Associated changes can include restlessness, tension, fatigue, sleep difficulty or problems concentrating.^[ref]

The breadth and persistence of worry distinguish it from an isolated moment of stress. Similar physical arousal can occur in other conditions, so an individual symptom such as a racing heart does not by itself identify the disorder.

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 psychiatrist is a physician specializing in mental disorders. The specialty combines medical and psychological assessment with investigation of biological, psychological and social contributors to difficulties in functioning.

A child and adolescent psychiatrist is a psychiatrist specializing in the mental health of children and young people. Assessment must take account of biological development, family and school context, and the difference between a transient developmental pattern and sustained impairment.

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

A researcher who coauthored experiments relating heartbeat-timing performance to functional brain measurements. Combining a bodily signal with a perceptual task helped distinguish interoception from subjective confidence alone.^[ref]

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

A researcher who coauthored a randomized pilot study combining a pharmacological intervention with virtual-reality exposure for phobic participants. The design tested augmentation of fear extinction rather than treating an acute drug response as identical to durable learning.^[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.

A researcher who proposed an aberrant-salience framework connecting dopamine signaling, psychosis and drug action. The contribution was a theoretical synthesis generating testable relationships, rather than a single experiment proving every causal link.^[ref]

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

A researcher who coauthored a controlled crossover study comparing drug effects on context-related and cue-related fear responses. Measuring fear-potentiated startle supplied an operational response distinct from a direct reading of subjective experience.^[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]

A researcher who coauthored a systematic review and network comparison of antidepressant trials. Separate estimates of efficacy and acceptability made different clinical outcomes explicit. This was evidence synthesis across trials rather than one new treatment experiment.^[ref]

Researcher contributing to behavioural neuroscience.^[ref]

A researcher who coauthored a crossover depletion experiment investigating serotonin function in relation to antidepressant response. Perturbing precursor availability tested a particular mechanistic dependence rather than establishing that every depressive illness has one chemical cause.^[ref]

Researcher contributing to behavioural neuroscience.^[ref]

A researcher who developed a historical catecholamine hypothesis of affective disorders. The proposal organized pharmacological observations into a mechanistic account; its status as a hypothesis should be distinguished from a universally established cause of depression.^[ref]

Researcher contributing to behavioural neuroscience.^[ref]