NAME: SOLIMAN, KATHLEEN CLAIRE B. DATE: Jan.

06, 2020

Psychiatric Signs and Symptoms

I. Consciousness

A. Disturbances in Consciousness

 Disorientation: a usually transient state of confusion especially as to time, place, or identity often as a
result of disease or drugs.

 Clouding of consciousness: also known as brain fog or mental fog, is a term used
in medicine denoting an abnormality in the regulation of the overall level of consciousness that is mild
and less severe than a delirium. The sufferer experiences a subjective sensation of
mental clouding described as feeling "foggy".

 Stupor: a condition of greatly dulled or completely suspended sense or sensibility. A

drunken stupor specifically; a chiefly mental condition marked by absence of spontaneous movement,
greatly diminished responsiveness to stimulation, and usually impaired consciousness.

 Delirium: a sudden state of severe confusion and rapid changes in brain function, sometimes
associated with hallucinations and hyperactivity, during which the patient is inaccessible to normal
contact.

 Coma: a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened; fails to
respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound; lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle; and does not
initiate voluntary actions.

 Coma vigil: a state of coma in which the patient lies unconscious but with the eyes open.

 Somnolence: sleepiness, the state of feeling drowsy, ready to fall asleep. A person
experiencing somnolence is somnolent and is acting somnolently.

B. Disturbances of Attention

 Distractibility: a condition in which the attention of the mind is easily distracted by small and irrelevant
stimuli.

 Hypervigilance: extreme or excessive vigilance the state of being highly or abnormally alert to
potential danger or threat.

 Selective Inattention: a prolonged or chronic lack of registering or perceiving a particular stimuli.

Typically the stimuli being disregarded is unpleasant, anxiety inducing, distressing, or deemed
unimportant.
  Trance: a sleep-like altered state of consciousness (as of deep hypnosis) usually characterized by
partly suspended animation with diminished or absent sensory and motor activity and subsequent lack
of recall.

C. Disturbances in Suggestibility

 Folie a deux: shared psychosis, or shared delusional disorder is a psychiatric syndrome in which
symptoms of a delusional belief and sometimes hallucinations are transmitted from one individual to
another.

II. Emotion

A. Mood

 Euthymic: a normal, tranquil mental state or mood. It is often used to describe a stable mental state or
mood in those affected with bipolar disorder that is neither manic nor depressive, yet is distinguishable
from healthy controls.

 Dysphoric: a state of generalized unhappiness, restlessness, dissatisfaction, or frustration, and it can

be a symptom of several mental health conditions.

 Expansive: marked by or indicative of exaggerated euphoria and delusions of self-importance a patient

with expansive trends.

 Elevated: comprised of feelings of enthusiasm, well-being, confidence, energy, and success. Elevated
mood is a component of euphoria. Although an elevated mood in general is a great and natural thing if
it is excessive or sustained it can be a symptom of mania or bipolar disorder.

 Euphoria: an overwhelming feeling of happiness, joy, and well-being. This emotion can be either a
normal reaction to happy events or a symptom of substance abuse and certain mental health
conditions.

 Ecstasy: a subjective experience of total involvement of the subject, with an object of their awareness.
A loss of self-control and sometimes a temporary loss of consciousness, which is often associated with
religious mysticism, sexual intercourse and the use of certain drugs.

 Irritable: is the state of feeling aggravated, frustrated, or being prone to anger. It is commonly found
when in stressful or pressured situations. Irritability is considered an emotion and
can affect the mood in a negative way. Irritability is commonly developed from anxiety disorders.

 Depression: a mood or emotional state that is marked by feelings of low self-worth or guilt and a
reduced ability to enjoy life.

 Grief or Mourning: a multifaceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something
that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed.
  Anhedonia: is the inability to feel pleasure. It's a common symptom of depression as well as other
mental health disorders.

B. Affect

 Appropriate: describes when an individual reacts with the proper and expected emotion for the
situation. It is a person who is acting appropriately for the situation at hand.

 Inappropriate: emotional responses that are not in keeping with the situation or are incompatible with
expressed thoughts or wishes, such as smiling when told about the death of a friend.

 Labile: also known as Pseudobulbar affect (PBA) or Emotional Incontinence, is a disorder where the
patient has excessive displays of emotion, or expresses emotions that are not congruent with the
situation.

Levels of Affect

 Flat: a severe reduction in emotional expressiveness.

 Blunted: refers to a reduction in the intensity of an individual's emotional response.

 Restricted or Constricted: a term used to describe a mild constriction in a client's physical affect:
range and/or intensity of emotion or display of feelings.

 Full: a wide range of emotional expression during the assessment.

C. Other emotions

 Anxiety: an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like
increased blood pressure. People with anxiety disorders usually have recurring intrusive thoughts or
concerns. They may avoid certain situations out of worry.

 Fear: a vital response to both physical and emotional danger.

 Agitation: a feeling of aggravation, annoyance, or restlessness brought on by provocation or in some

cases, little to no provocation.

 Tension: similar to a state of stress, though people experiencing tension tend to describe feelings of
tightness, overwhelming anxiety, and uncertainty.

 Panic: sudden onset of intense apprehension, fear, or terror that occurs without apparent cause.

 Apathy: a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern about something. May lack a sense of purpose,
worth, or meaning in their life.

 Ambivalence: a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some
object. he experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively
and negatively valenced components.
  Shame: a painful emotion that responds to a sense of failure to attain some ideal state.

 Guilt: a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes accurately
or not that they have compromised their own standards of conduct or have violated universal moral
standards and bear significant responsibility for that violation.

Physiological disturbances associated with mood

 Anorexia: An eating disorder characterized by markedly reduced appetite or total aversion to food.

 Hyperphagia: abnormally increased appetite for consumption of food frequently associated with injury
to the hypothalamus.

 Insomnia: known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which people have trouble sleeping. They
may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep as long as desired.

 Hypersomnia: a condition in which you feel excessive sleepiness during the day. It may occur even
after long stretches of sleep. Another name for hypersomnia is excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS).

 Diurnal variation: refers to the human tendency to have shifting moods throughout the 24 hour
day/night cycle.

III. Motor Behavior

 Echopraxia: the involuntary imitation of the movements of another person.

 Catatonia: a state of psycho-motor immobility and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor.

o Catalepsy: unusual immobility of posture and decreased sensitivity to pain. Causes include
nervous disorders, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and extreme shock, among others.

o Catatonic rigidity: characterised by immobility during which people may hold rigid poses
(stupor), an inability to speak (mutism), or waxy flexibility, in which they maintain positions after
being placed in them by someone else.

o Catatonic posturing: an involuntary flexion or extension of the arms and legs, indicating
severe brain injury.

o Cerea flexibilitas: the capacity (as in catalepsy) to maintain the limbs or other bodily parts in
whatever position they have been placed.

o Catatonic excitement: a state of constant purposeless agitation and excitation. Individuals in

this state are extremely hyperactive, although, as aforementioned, the activity seems to lack
purpose.

o Catatonic stupor: characterized by immobility during which people may hold rigid poses
(stupor), an inability to speak (mutism), or waxy flexibility, in which they maintain positions after
being placed in them by someone else.
  Cataplexy: a sudden and transient episode of muscle weakness accompanied by full conscious
awareness, typically triggered by emotions such as laughing, crying, or terror.

 Negativism: a behavior characterized by the tendency to resist direction from others, and the refusal to
comply with requests.

 Stereotypy: a repetitive behavior; a ritualistic movement, posture or utterance. Stereotypic behavior in

autistic children is often called "stimming" because it is believed to be a part of self-stimulation.

 Mannerism: are types of physical actions, reactions, and gestures that are customary and habitual in
an individual. Mannerisms are basically habitual behaviors that a person has that has grown from their
upbringing and environment.

 Automatism: is automatic behavior that is spontaneous and occurs without conscious thought. These
actions are not performed purposefully and the individual cannot recall the behavior.

 Command Automatism: instructions are carried out regardless of consequences.

 Overactivity: a level of activity that is too high or greater than normal.

 Hyperactivity: a state of being unusually or abnormally active. It's often difficult to manage for people
around the person who's hyperactive, such as teachers, employers, and parents.
 Psychomotor agitation

 Akathisia: a movement disorder characterized by a feeling of inner restlessness and a compelling

need to be in constant motion, as well as by actions such as rocking while standing or sitting, lifting the
feet as if marching on the spot, and crossing and uncrossing the legs while sitting.
 Somnambulism

 Hypoactivity: an inhibition of behavioral or locomotor activity. Hypoactivity is a characteristic effect of

sedative agents and many centrally acting anesthetics.

 Psychomotor retardation: involves a slowing-down of thought and a reduction of physical movements

in an individual. Psychomotor retardation can cause a visible slowing of physical and emotional
reactions, including speech and affect.

 Compulsions: are repetitive rule-bound behaviours that the individual feels must be performed in order
to ward off distressing situations.

IV. Thought

A. General disturbances in form or process of thought

 Psychosis: is characterized by an impaired relationship with reality. People who are

experiencing psychosis may have either hallucinations or delusions.

 Neurosis: also called psychoneurosis or plural psychoneuroses, mental disorder that causes a sense
of distress and deficit in functioning.

 Illogical thinking: not logical or reasonable.

  Autistic thinking: a type of mental activity in which focus is directed inward and the thinking is
subjective (as opposed to objective). Autistic thinking is comprised of inner thoughts and individual
reality.

 Magical thinking: the belief that one's own thoughts, wishes, or desires can influence the external
world. It is common in very young children.

B. Specific disturbances in form/process of thought

 Echolalia: the involuntary parrotlike repetition (echoing) of a word or phrase just spoken by another
person.

 Neologism: a new word that is coined especially by a person affected with schizophrenia and is
meaningless except to the coiner, and is typically a combination of two existing words or a shortening
or distortion of an existing word.

 Word Salad: a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases", most often
used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder.

 Circumstantiality: a communication disorder in which the focus of a conversation drifts, but often
comes back to the point.

 Tangentiality: the tendency to speak about topics unrelated to the main topic of discussion.

 Incoherence: inability to express oneself in a clear and orderly manner, most commonly manifested as
disjointed and unintelligible speech. This may be an expression of disorganized and impaired thinking.

 Perseveration: the repetition of a particular response (such as a word, phrase, or gesture) regardless
of the absence or cessation of a stimulus.

 Verbigeration: obsessive repetition of random words. It is similar to perseveration, in which a person

repeats words in response to a stimulus. However, verbigeration occurs when a person repeats words
without a stimulus.

 Looseness of association: a thought disorder characterized by discourse consisting of a sequence of

unrelated or only remotely related ideas. The frame of reference often changes from one sentence to
the next.

 Flight of ideas: rapid shifting of ideas with only superficial associative connections between them that
is expressed as a disconnected rambling from subject to subject.

 Derailment: a symptom of thought disorder, often occurring in individuals with schizophrenia, marked
by frequent interruptions in thought and jumping from one idea to another unrelated or indirectly related
idea.

 Blocking: a phenomenon in which a previously-learned thought process prevents or delays the

learning and conditioning of new behavior.

 Clang association: refers to a mode of speech characterized by association of words based upon
sound rather than concepts.

 Glossolalia: also called xenoglossia, is commonly known as "speaking in tongues". It involves

vocalizing word-like segments that sound like a language foreign to the speaker while in a state of
trance or spiritual excitement.
C. Specific Disturbance in Content of Thought

 Poverty of content: a speech problem wherein a person talks a lot but does not say anything
substantive, or says much more than is necessary to convey a message. The speech is
understandable and grammatically correct, but does not convey meaningful information.

 Overvalued idea: refers to a solitary, abnormal belief that is neither delusional nor obsessional in
nature, but which is preoccupying to the extent of dominating the sufferer's life.

 Preoccupation: defined as an engrossing or near obsessive interest in a topic. In everyday use it is

used to mean having difficulty in focusing on a topic because of being distracted by another matter or
subject.

 Obsession: a persistent (continuous) and recurring thought that a person is unable to control.

 Compulsion: a repetitive, rule-based behavior that a person feels they must perform in order to feel
normal and in some cases to prevent negative consequences from happening. It is an impulse to
repeatedly perform an act even if it doesn't seem rational or goes against an individual's will.

 Coprolalia: the involuntary use of obscene language or derogatory remarks. The sufferer has no
control over their offensive speech. This is symptom of some mental illnesses and brain diseases.

 Egomania: occasionally referred to as megalomania, is extreme self-involvement and self-interest. It is

often accompanied by feelings of greatness and superiority.

 Monomania: extreme enthusiasm or zeal for a single subject or idea, often manifested as a rigid,
irrational idea.

 Hypochondria: mental disorder characterized by an excessive preoccupation with illness and a

tendency to fear or believe that one has a serious disease on the basis of the presence of insignificant
physical signs or symptoms.

 Phobia: an extreme, irrational fear of a specific object or situation.

o Specific: any kind of anxiety disorder that amounts to an unreasonable or irrational fear related
to exposure to specific objects or situations.

o Social: intense anxiety or fear of being judged, negatively evaluated, or rejected in a social or
performance situation.

 Delusion

o Mood-congruent: any delusion with content consistent with either a depressive or manic state.

o Mood-incongruent: a term used to describe a serious symptom of bipolar disorder. It is a

psychotic feature of the disease wherein the person's belief or action, whether by hallucination
or delusion, does not match with his or her mood.

o Bizarre: a fixed, false belief which, unlike non-bizarre delusions, cannot possibly be true.

o Systematized: a false, irrational belief that is highly developed and organized, with multiple
elaborations that are coherent, consistent, and logically related.
o Nihilistic: a philosophical position which argues that the world, and especially human
existence, is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value.

o Delusion of poverty: a false belief in which the individual insists that he or she is, or will soon
be, entirely destitute.

o Somatic: delusion whose content pertains to bodily functioning, bodily sensations or physical
appearance. Usually the false belief is that the body is somehow diseased, abnormal or
changed.

o Delusion of self-accusation: ungrounded feeling of remorse or guilt of delusional intensity.

o Paranoid: an instinct or thought process which is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or

fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. It is distinct from phobias, which also involve
irrational fear, but usually no blame.

o Persecution: are a set of delusional conditions in which the affected persons believe they
are being persecuted. Specifically, they have been defined as containing two central
elements: The individual thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur.

o Reference: a neutral event is believed to have a special and personal meaning.

o Grandeur: the false belief in one's own superiority, greatness, or intelligence. People
experiencing delusions of grandeur do not just have high self-esteem; instead, they believe
in their own greatness and importance even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary.

o Delusion of control: false belief that another person, group of people, or external
force controls one's general thoughts, feelings, impulses, or behavior.

o Thought insertion: as feeling as if one's thoughts are not one's own, but rather belong to
someone else and have been inserted into one's mind.

o Thought withdrawal: the delusional belief that thoughts have been 'taken out' of the patient's
mind, and the patient has no power over this. It often accompanies thought blocking.

o Thought broadcasting: the belief that others can hear or are aware of an
individual's thoughts. Thought broadcasting can be a positive symptom of schizophrenia.

o Thought control: refers to the ways in which people control their thoughts and emotions to
remain in agreement with their goals. People engage in mental control when they suppress
a thought, concentrate on a feeling or sensation, restrain an emotional response, or strive to
maintain a mood.

o Delusion of infidelity: a psychological disorder in which a person is preoccupied with the

thought that their spouse or sexual partner is being unfaithful without having any real proof,
along with socially unacceptable or abnormal behavior.

o Erotomania: a delusional belief that a person is in love with the affected individual, despite
contrary evidence.
V. Speech

 Pressure of speech: a tendency to speak rapidly and frenziedly, as if motivated by an urgency not
apparent to the listener. The speech produced is difficult to interrupt. Such speech may be too fast,
erratic, irrelevant, or too tangential for the listener to understand.

 Poverty of speech: a general lack of additional, unprompted content seen in normal speech.

 Poverty of content of speech: a speech problem wherein a person talks a lot but does not say
anything substantive, or says much more than is necessary to convey a message.

 Non spontaneous speech: a type of communication disorder where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This
can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is
considered mute.

 Dysprosody: may manifest as pseudo-foreign accent syndrome, refers to a disorder in which one or
more of the prosodic functions are either compromised or eliminated completely.

 Dysarthria: a condition in which the muscles you use for speech are weak or you have difficulty
controlling them.

 Stuttering: also called stammering or childhood-onset fluency disorder, a speech disorder that involves
frequent and significant problems with normal fluency and flow of speech.

VI. Perception

A. Disturbances of Perception

 Hallucination: a sensation or sensory perception that a person experiences in the absence of a

relevant external stimulus. That is, a person experiences something that doesn't really exist (except in
their mind).

o Hypnogogic: the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep.

o Hypnopompic: the state of consciousness leading out of sleep, sleepers often wake confused,
or speak without making sense.

o Auditory: also known as paracusia, is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds
without auditory stimulus.

o Visual: when you see things that aren't there.

o Olfactory: Smelling something that isn't present in the surrounding environment. Also known as
phantosmia.

o Gustatory: the perception of taste without a stimulus.

o Tactile somatic: an abnormal or false sensation of touch or perception of movement on the

skin or inside the body.

o Lilliputian: a visual hallucination of objects, animals, or people greatly reduced in size, which
may result from a number of conditions, such as delirium tremens, typhoid, or brain tumors in
the temporal lobe.
B. Disturbances associated with Cognitive Disorders

 Agnosia: the inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize
objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any
significant memory loss.

 Anosognosia: also called "lack of insight," is a symptom of severe mental illness experienced by some
that impairs a person's ability to understand and perceive his or her illness.

 Somatopagnosia: inability to recognize a part of one's body as one's own.

 Apraxia: a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to perform learned (familiar) movements
on command, even though the command is understood and there is a willingness to perform the
movement.

C. Disturbances associated with Conversion and Dissociative Phenomenon

 Depersonalization: can consist of a detachment within the self, regarding one's mind or body, or being
a detached observer of oneself.

 Derealization: an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems
unreal.

 Fugue: a dissociative disorder and a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for
personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of
individuality.

 Multiple personality: characterized by a person's identity fragmenting into two or more

distinct personality states.

VII. Memory

 Amnesia: loss of memory occurring most often as a result of damage to the brain from trauma, stroke,
Alzheimer disease, alcohol and drug toxicity, or infection.

o Anterograde: a condition in which a person is unable to create new memories after an

amnesia-inducing event.

o Retrograde: a loss of memory-access to events that occurred, or information that was learned
in the past.

 Paramnesia: memory-based delusion or confabulation, or an inability to distinguish between real and

fantasy memories. It may refer more specifically to: Déjà vu, the delusion that a current event has
already been experienced before.

o Fausse Reconnaissance: a false memory due to the recollection of a really stressful memory,
such as a memory or feeling of castration.

o Confabulation: a type of memory error in which gaps in memory are unconsciously filled with
fabricated, misinterpreted, or distorted information. In these instances, the individual may
confuse imaginings with real memories.

o Déjà vu: the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. The phrase
translates literally as "already seen".
 o Déjà entendu: the sensation of having heard something even if the details are unclear or even
imaginary. Meaning "already heard" in French, it is a false sense of familiarity upon hearing
something novel and the feeling that you have heard it before.

o Déjà pense: the feeling where you have had the same thoughts before even you haven't. Also
called as a “false memory."

o Jamais vu: refers to the phenomenon of experiencing a situation that one recognizes in some
fashion, but nonetheless seems very unfamiliar.

 Hypermnesia: the state of having an enhanced memory which usually occurs during atypical
conditions like delirium, trauma, or hypnosis. This is in contrast with amnesia which is the loss of
memory.

 Screen memory: a distorted memory, generally of a visual rather than verbal nature, deriving from
childhood.

 Lethologica: a psychological disorder that inhibits an individual's ability to articulate their thoughts by
temporarily forgetting key words, phrases or names in conversation.

Levels of Memory

 Immediate: a type or stage of memory in which an individual recalls information recently presented,
such as a street address or telephone number, although this information may be forgotten after
its immediate use.

 Recent: system for temporarily storing and managing the information required to carry out complex
cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension.

 Recent past: the ability to recall events from the immediate past.

 Remote: the ability to remember things and events from many years earlier.