PsychiatryPsychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of deleterious mental conditions. These include various matters related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. Initial psychiatric assessment of a person begins with a case history and mental status examination. Physical examinations, psychological tests, and laboratory tests may be conducted. On occasion, neuroimaging or other neurophysiological studies are performed.
Self-disorderA self-disorder, also called ipseity disturbance, is a psychological phenomenon of disruption or diminishing of a person's minimal self – the fundamental sense that one's experiences are truly one's own. People with self-disorder feel that their internal experiences are actually external; for example, they may experience their own thoughts as coming from outside themselves, whether in the form of true auditory hallucinations or merely as a vague sense that their thoughts do not belong to them.
Folie à deuxFolie à deux (French- 'folly of two', or 'madness [shared] by two'), additionally known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder (SDD), is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations, are transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois ('three') or quatre ('four'); and further, folie en famille ('family madness') or even folie à plusieurs ('madness of several').
Family-wise error rateIn statistics, family-wise error rate (FWER) is the probability of making one or more false discoveries, or type I errors when performing multiple hypotheses tests. John Tukey developed in 1953 the concept of a familywise error rate as the probability of making a Type I error among a specified group, or "family," of tests. Ryan (1959) proposed the related concept of an experimentwise error rate, which is the probability of making a Type I error in a given experiment.
Dopamine hypothesis of schizophreniaThe dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia or the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis is a model that attributes the positive symptoms of schizophrenia to a disturbed and hyperactive dopaminergic signal transduction. The model draws evidence from the observation that a large number of antipsychotics have dopamine-receptor antagonistic effects. The theory, however, does not posit dopamine overabundance as a complete explanation for schizophrenia.
Delusional parasitosisDelusional parasitosis (DP) is a mental disorder in which individuals have a persistent belief that they are infested with living or nonliving pathogens such as parasites, insects, or bugs, when no such infestation is present. They usually report tactile hallucinations known as formication, a sensation resembling insects crawling on or under the skin. Morgellons is considered to be a subtype of this condition, in which individuals have sores that they believe contain harmful fibers.
Religious delusionA religious delusion is defined as a delusion, or fixed belief not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence, involving religious themes or subject matter. Religious faith, meanwhile, is defined as a belief in God or a religious doctrine in the absence of evidence. Psychologists, scientists, and philosophers have debated the distinction between the two, which is subjective and cultural. Individuals experiencing religious delusions are preoccupied with religious subjects that are not within the expected beliefs for an individual's background, including culture, education, and known experiences of religion.
ProdromeIn medicine, a prodrome is an early sign or symptom (or set of signs and symptoms) that often indicates the onset of a disease before more diagnostically specific signs and symptoms develop. It is derived from the Greek word prodromos, meaning "running before". Prodromes may be non-specific symptoms or, in a few instances, may clearly indicate a particular disease, such as the prodromal migraine aura. For example, fever, malaise, headache and lack of appetite frequently occur in the prodrome of many infective disorders.
MetascienceMetascience (also known as meta-research) is the use of scientific methodology to study science itself. Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research while reducing inefficiency. It is also known as "research on research" and "the science of science", as it uses research methods to study how research is done and find where improvements can be made. Metascience concerns itself with all fields of research and has been described as "a bird's eye view of science".
Cognitive behavioral therapyCognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most effective means of treatment for substance abuse and co-occurring mental health disorders. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (such as thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and their associated behaviors to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems.
