Oct 24, 2006

Signs and Symptoms - VI

Symptoms are the patient's complaints. They are highly subjective and amenable to suggestion and to alterations in the patient's mood and other mental processes.

Depersonalization

Feeling that one's body has changed shape or that specific organs have become elastic and are not under one's control. Usually coupled with "out of body" experiences. Common in a variety of mental health and physiological disorders: depression, anxiety, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and hypnagogic states. Often observed in adolescents. See: Derealization.

Derailment

A loosening of associations. A pattern of speech in which unrelated or loosely-related ideas are expressed hurriedly and forcefully, with frequent topical shifts and with no apparent internal logic or reason. See: incoherence.

Derealization

Feeling that one's immediate environment is unreal, dream-like, or somehow altered. See: Depersonalization.

Dereistic Thinking

Inability to incorporate reality-based facts and logical inference into one's thinking. Fantasy-based thoughts.

Disorientation

Not knowing what year, month, or day it is or not knowing one's location (country, state, city, street, or building one is in). Also: not knowing who one is, one's identity. One of the signs of delirium.

Echolalia

Imitation by way of exactly repeating another person's speech. Involuntary, semiautomatic, uncontrollable, and repeated imitation of the speech of others. Observed in organic mental disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, psychosis, and catatonia. See: Echopraxia.

Echopraxia

Imitation by way or exactly repeating another person's movements. Involuntary, semiautomatic, uncontrollable, and repeated imitation of the movements of others. Observed in organic mental disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, psychosis, and catatonia. See: Echolalia.

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