NSG 212 Terms

1. “La belle indifférence”: Inappropriate lack of concern for symptoms.

2. Agranulocytosis is a potential life-threatening condition in which the blood has a lower-than-normal number of white blood cells

3. Akathisia: Feelings of severe restlessness not relieved by movement caused by the use of antipsychotics.

4.     Anhedonia: Inability to experience pleasure.

5. Aphasia: Inability to communicate through speech because of brain dysfunction.

6. Apraxia: Inability to carry out motor activities despite intact motor function.

7. Assault: Making a threat to a client’s person (approaching the client in a threatening manner with a syringe in hand) is considered assault.

8. Assimilation: Taking in, processing, incorporating new information (Piaget)

9. Autonomy: Development of a sense of self and independence (Erikson)

10. Avolition: lack of desire or motivation to accomplish goals

11. Battery: Touching a client in a harmful or offensive way is considered battery. This would occur if the nurse threatening the client with a syringe actually grabbed the client and gave an injection against the client's will.

12. Burden of treatment: Interventions, medications and treatments that may complicate a client’s conditions resulting in poor adherences, reduced self-care and potentially worsening outcomes including increased hospitalizations and poor quality of life.

13. Catatonia: Rigidity and inflexibility of muscles, resulting in immobility or extreme agitation.

14. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT): Psychotherapeutic approach that combines behavior therapy with cognitive psychology; it is a problem-focused and action-oriented short-term therapy.

15. Competence: A client’s ability to understand information, use reasonable thought processes, communicate their wishes, and understand the consequences of their decisions.

16. Conversion: Transference of anxiety into physical symptoms.

17. Countertransference: occurs when a health care team member displaces characteristics of people in their past onto a client.

18. Cyclothymic: Characterized by chronic mood disturbance involving numerous episodes of hypomania and depressed mood.

19. Defense mechanisms: Group of behaviors used to reduce or eliminate anxiety. Unconsciously falling into habits that give the illusion of coping but produce ineffective results.

20. Deinstitutionalization: A policy in which people who had formerly required long hospital stays became able to leave the institution and return to their communities and homes.

21. Delirium tremens (DTs): Form of delirium from withdrawal from alcohol in which the person experiences, among other symptoms, tremors, hallucinations, delirium, and diaphoresis.

22. Delusions of Grandeur: belief of exaggerated importance

23. Delusions of Reference: belief that the thoughts & behaviors of others are directed toward self

24. Delusions: including delusions of grandeur and persecution

25. Depersonalization: where they feel like they are seeing themselves from outside of their body.

26. Derealization: where they feel detached from their environment or that objects around them are unreal.

27. Dissociation: a mental state of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, memories, and feelings

28. Duty to warn: the obligation of mental health professionals to warn third parties whom their clients intend to harm.

29. Dysphasia: Difficulty in speaking.

30. Dystonia: A disorder in which the symptoms manifest as bizarre distortions or involuntary movements of any muscle group.

31. Echolalia: Repetition of phrases, words, or part of a word; often part of catatonia.

32. Echopraxia: Repeating the movements of others.

33. Effective coping: Skills that reduce tension and do not create more problems for an individual.

34. Ego: Second part of Freud’s personality development theory, balancing the id; the ego meets and interacts with the outside world.

35. Extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS): A variety of responses associated with drugs that antagonize the dopamine receptors outside the pyramidal tract, causing a variety of effects, including tremors and rigidity.

36. False imprisonment: Confining a client to a specific area (a seclusion room) physically, verbally, or using a chemical restraint when it is not part of the clients treatment (i.e., to prevent client harm to self or others) is considered false imprisonment.

37. Fidelity: A promise to be a competent nurse when providing patient care.

38. Global aphasia: Combination of receptive and expressive forms of aphasia

39. Hallucinations: including auditory, visual, tactile, gustatory, olfactory

40. Id: First part of Freud’s personality theory, which is preoccupied with self-gratification.

41. Illusions: misperceiving real external stimuli

42. Informed Consent is the individual’s voluntary agreement to participate in treatment or medical procedures based on their understanding of the risks and benefits as well as any alternative treatments.

43. Intentional torts: willful actions that damage a client's property or violate client rights

44. Interpersonal communication: Communication that occurs one-on-one with another individual.

45. Intrapersonal communication: Communication that occurs within an individual. Also identified as “self‑talk.” This occurs within one’s self and is the internal discussion that takes place when an individual is thinking thoughts and not outwardly verbalizing them.

46. Involuntary admission: The client enters the mental health facility against their will for an indefinite period of time. The admission is based on the client’s need for psychiatric treatment, the risk of harm to self or others, or the inability to provide self-care.

47. Magical thinking: A primitive form of thinking in which an individual believes that thinking about a possible occurrence can make it happen, believing that one’s thoughts can control others

48. Malingering: Deliberate faking or exaggerating of symptoms.

49. Malpractice: A type of professional negligence.

50. Mood: An individual’s sustained emotional tone, which influences behavior, personality, and perception.

51. Negative reinforcement: Increasing the probability that a behavior will recur by removal of an undesirable reinforcing stimulus.

52. Negative symptoms: those found among people who do not have the disorder but are missing or lacking among individuals with schizophrenia. Negative symptoms reflect a lessening or loss of normal functions. These symptoms make holding a job, forming relationships, and other day-to-day functions especially difficult for people with schizophrenia

53. Negligence: Failing to provide adequate care in a personal or professional situation when one has an obligation to do so. To be liable for negligence, it must be proven that the professional had a duty to protect, breached the duty, that the action or failure to act caused injury (proximate cause) and that the injury would not have happened anyway (cause in fact), and that damages occurred.

54. Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome: A potentially life-threatening reaction to antipsychotic drugs characterized by fever, altered mental status, muscle rigidity, and vital sign instability.

55. Neuroplasticity:  the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury.

56. Oculogyric crisis: uncontrolled rolling back of the eyes

57. Operant conditioning: A method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for desired or undesired behaviors.

58. Orientation: Measurement of knowledge of person, place, and time in the mental health assessment.

59. Paranoid delusions: belief of deliberate harassment & persecution

60. Parkinsonism: Group of symptoms that mimic Parkinson’s disease, including tremors and rigidity.

61. Phobia: Irrational fear.

62. Physical Sensation Delusion: belief that parts of the body are diseased, distorted, or missing

63. Positive reinforcement: Increasing the probability that a behavior will recur by addition of a reinforcing stimulus.

64. Positive schizophrenia symptoms: those that are found among people with schizophrenia but not present among those who do not have the disorder. They reflect an excess or distortion of normal functions and can include:

65. Proxemics: Study of spatial relationships including space, time, and waiting, which are all influenced by one’s culture.

66. Pseudo parkinsonism: A clinical presentation in which manifestations appear to mimic those of parkinsonism.

67. Psychosis: A mental state in which there is a severe loss of contact with reality.

68. Rapport: The matching of speech patterns using auditory, kinesthetic, and visual references, which provide a starting point for meaningful communication.

69. Rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT): Form of therapy involving a rational balance between thinking and feeling.

70. Respite care: Relief supplied to primary caregivers.

71. Scaffolding: A child becomes more independent after receiving guidance in their learning process. The child can then model the given guidance even though the parent or caregiver is still present to assist in advancing the child’s positive behavior.

72. Secondary gain: Response to illness that results in attention, monetary benefits, and the like.

73. Somatic: Relating to or affecting the body.

74. Somatization: Emotional turmoil that is expressed by physical symptoms, often in the loss of functioning of a body part.

75. Speech disturbances: such as loose associations, neologisms (making up words), perseveration (repeating the same words or ideas in response to different questions), echolalia (repeating words or phrases), disorganized speech

76. Splitting: Defense mechanism often used in those with borderline personality disorders when there is difficulty assimilating both positive and negative aspects of a situation.

77. Superego: Third part of Freud’s personality theory; the conscience, which deals with morality.

78. Tardive dyskinesia (TD): Involuntary movements due to side effects of some antipsychotic drugs.

79. Therapeutic communication: Communication that attempts to determine a patient’s needs. Also called active or purposeful communication.

80. Thought insertion: involves somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's

81. Transference: occurs when the client views a member of the health care team as having characteristics of another person who has been significant to the client’s personal life.

82. Denial: An unconscious refusal to see

83. Repression: An unconscious burying or “forgetting” mechanism. Excludes or withholds from people’s consciousness events or situations that are unbearable. Demonstrating emotions toward a person but unable to identify the reason

84. Dissociation: Painful events or situations are separated or dissociated from the conscious mind. “Out-of-body experience.”

85. Rationalization: Substituting acceptable reasons for the true causes for personal behavior because admitting the truth is too threatening.

86. Compensation: Making up for something a person perceives as inadequacy by developing some other desirable trait.

87. Reaction formation (Overcompensation): Similar to compensation, but the person develops the OPPOSITE trait.

88. Regression: Emotionally returning to an earlier time in life when there was far less stress. Could be any age.

89. Sublimination: Unacceptable traits or characteristics are diverted unto acceptable traits or characteristics.

90. Displacement: Transferring anger and hostility to another person or object that is perceived as less powerful. “Kick the dog” syndrome.

91. Projection: Attributing feelings or impulses unacceptable to oneself onto others

92. Isolation: Emotion that is separated from the original feeling.

93. Avoidance: Unconsciously staying away from events or situations that might open feelings of aggression or anxiety.

94. Altruism: unselfish regard or devotion to others

95. Conversion Reaction: Anxiety is channeled into physical symptoms

96. Intellectualization: is a transition to reason, where the person avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic

97. Restitution (Undoing): Making amends for a behavior one thinks is unacceptable in an attempt to reduce guilt

98. Splitting: involves seeing people and events in absolute terms with no middle ground for discussion. Someone with splitting may idealize someone at one time (seeing the person as “all good”) and devalue them the next (seeing the person as “all bad”)

99. Scapegoating: Blaming others