Chapter 6: Somatic Symptom & Dissociative Disorders

Vocabulary flashcards covering major concepts, disorders, and key clinical terms from the lecture on Somatic Symptom, Related, and Dissociative Disorders.

Somatic Symptom Disorder

Condition marked by one or more distressing physical symptoms plus excessive thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to the symptom(s).

Illness Anxiety Disorder

Persistent health anxiety and preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious disease despite minimal or no somatic symptoms.

Conversion Disorder (Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder)

Neurological-like sensory or motor deficits (e.g., paralysis, blindness) unexplained by medical disease and incompatible with known physiology.

Psychological Factors Affecting Medical Condition

A diagnosed medical illness is worsened or interfered with by psychological or behavioral factors (e.g., anxiety exacerbating asthma).

Factitious Disorder

Intentional production or feigning of physical or psychological symptoms for no obvious external gain other than assuming the sick role.

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another

Caregiver induces illness in someone else (often a child) to assume the sick-role by proxy; formerly Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Dissociative Disorders

Group of conditions involving disruptions in consciousness, memory, identity, or perception (e.g., amnesia, depersonalization, DID).

Depersonalization

Feeling detached from oneself or feeling like an outside observer of one’s thoughts, body, or actions.

Derealization

Experiencing the external world as unreal, dreamlike, foggy, or visually distorted.

Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder

Persistent or recurrent episodes of depersonalization, derealization, or both, with intact reality testing and significant distress.

Dissociative Amnesia

Inability to recall important autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, not due to ordinary forgetting.

Generalized Amnesia

A subtype of dissociative amnesia involving complete loss of personal identity and life history memory.

Localized / Selective Amnesia

Failure to recall specific events, usually traumatic, that occurred during a circumscribed period of time.

Dissociative Fugue

Sudden travel away from home with amnesia for past and confusion about identity, sometimes adopting a new identity.

Amok

Culture-bound dissociative trance in which a person (usually male) engages in sudden violent outbursts followed by amnesia for the episode.

Dissociative Trance

Altered state featuring narrowed awareness or possession experiences, often culturally sanctioned but diagnosable when distressing or impairing.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Presence of two or more distinct personality states (“alters”) plus recurrent amnesia for everyday events, personal data, or trauma.

Alter

One of the distinct personality states or identities that alternately control behavior in DID.

Host Personality

Identity that seeks treatment and tries to manage the other alters in DID; often not the original personality.

Switch

Rapid transition from one alter to another in DID, sometimes accompanied by marked changes in voice, posture, or handedness.

La belle indifférence

Apparent lack of concern about physical symptoms sometimes seen in conversion disorder (now known to be unreliable diagnostically).

Primary Gain

Internal reduction of anxiety or emotional conflict achieved by developing physical symptoms (e.g., paralysis relieves guilt).

Secondary Gain

External advantages obtained from symptoms, such as attention, sympathy, or avoidance of responsibilities.

Disease Conviction

Unshakeable belief in having a serious illness despite medical reassurance; core feature of illness anxiety disorder.

Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures

Seizure-like episodes in conversion disorder without EEG changes indicative of epilepsy.

Somatic Sensitivity

Heightened perceptual awareness and misinterpretation of normal bodily sensations as signs of serious illness.

Suggestibility

Trait-like capacity to accept and internalize ideas or directives of others; linked to hypnotizability and dissociation risk.

Autohypnotic Model

Theory that highly hypnotizable, suggestible children use self-hypnosis to escape trauma, predisposing to DID.

Explanatory Therapy

Brief educational intervention that explains symptom origins, reducing health anxiety and health-care use.

Gatekeeper Physician

Designated primary doctor who screens complaints and limits unnecessary specialist visits in somatic symptom disorders.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Somatic Disorders

Treatment focusing on restructuring catastrophic interpretations, reducing checking/reassurance, and increasing activity.

Exposure Therapy for Illness Anxiety

Systematic confrontation with health-related cues (e.g., disease documentaries) while preventing safety behaviors to reduce anxiety.

Hypnosis in Conversion Disorder

Technique sometimes used to access and resolve underlying trauma and to retrain normal motor or sensory function.

Blindsight (Unconscious Vision)

Ability to respond to visual stimuli without conscious awareness; analogy used to explain sensory functioning in conversion blindness.

Koro

Culture-specific syndrome (primarily in Southeast Asia) featuring intense fear that the genitals are retracting into the body.

Dhat

South Asian culture-bound belief that semen loss leads to weakness and fatigue, often presenting as somatic symptoms.