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Anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, personality & eating disorders

146 articles

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD, C-PTSD), ICD-11 6B41: prolonged repeated trauma syndrome combining PTSD core symptoms with disturbances in affect regulation, self-concept, and relationships; 1–8% population prevalence; not in DSM-5.

Conversion disorder

Conversion disorder, or functional neurological symptom disorder (FND), causes neurological symptoms like weakness, tremor, and seizures without structural disease; diagnosed by positive signs such as the Hoover sign, historically called hysteria.

Coprophilia

Coprophilia: sexual arousal from viewing, smelling, or handling feces; a DSM-5 other specified paraphilic disorder, distinct from coprophagia, first categorized by Austrian psychiatrists in the 1870s.

CWC trial

CWC trial (NCT03429166), Connecting Women to Care, a VA-sponsored randomized trial led by Marylene Cloitre comparing home-based video-delivered STAIR versus present-centered therapy in 161 rural women veterans with military sexual trauma; STAIR produced larger PTSD reductions (d = 1.12 vs 0.78).

Cynophobia

Cynophobia, fear of dogs, is a DSM-5-TR specific phobia of the animal type. It arises through conditioning, observational learning, and poor extinction, and is treated mainly with exposure therapy.

Daniel Samuel Pine

Daniel Samuel Pine is an American psychiatrist and NIH Distinguished Investigator who leads NIMH's Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, studying brain mechanisms of pediatric anxiety and mood disorders.

Dependent personality disorder

Dependent personality disorder (DPD), a Cluster C personality disorder: pervasive need to be taken care of, submissive clinging behavior, fear of separation; five of eight DSM-5-TR criteria; prevalence about 0.5–0.6%; treated with psychotherapy, no approved drugs.

Depersonalization

Depersonalisation, also called depersonalization-derealization disorder (DPD, DPDR, ICD-11 6B66), is a dissociative disorder of feeling detached from one's self; coined 1898, affects 1-2% of the population.

Dermatophagia (φαγεία)

Dermatophagia (φαγεία), also called dermatodaxia or wolf-biting, is a compulsive body-focused repetitive behavior of biting one's own skin, usually around the fingers, classified under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders and treated with habit reversal therapy.

Desensitization (psychology)

Desensitization (systematic desensitization) is Joseph Wolpe's behavior therapy for phobias and anxiety, pairing graded exposure to a feared hierarchy with relaxation via reciprocal inhibition; now largely subsumed under exposure therapy.

Diogenes syndrome

Diogenes syndrome, also called senile squalor, is a neurobehavioral syndrome of severe self-neglect, domestic squalor, hoarding, lack of shame, and refusal of help, named by Clark et al. in 1975 and not listed in DSM-5 or ICD-10.

Disinhibition

Disinhibition, also called behavioral disinhibition or the disinhibition versus constraint trait, is reduced restraint over impulses and emotions, seen as a neurological state after frontal brain injury, alcohol, or drugs, and as a personality trait linked to externalizing psychopathology and ICD-11 trait domains.

Dissociative amnesia

Dissociative amnesia (psychogenic or functional amnesia) is a controversial psychiatric condition of inability to recall stressful autobiographical information without a neurological cause; DSM-5 includes fugue as a subtype, and case-study evidence and biomarkers remain weak.

Dissociative neurological symptom disorder

Dissociative neurological symptom disorder (ICD-11 6B60) is the WHO classification of functional neurological symptoms such as non-epileptic seizures, paralysis, or sensory loss, with twelve subtypes; the DSM-5 counterpart is functional neurological symptom disorder (conversion disorder).

Eating disorder

Eating disorder: mental disorders involving disturbed eating and body-weight concerns, mainly anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and ARFID; 18 million cases in 2023, treated chiefly with CBT-ED and family-based therapy.

Eating of non-nutritive substances

Eating of non-nutritive substances, ICD-11 code MB29.2, is the behavior called pica in DSM-5-TR: persistent eating of non-food items such as clay, ice, starch, or hair for over one month, excluding children under two and culturally sanctioned practice.

Emetophobia

Emetophobia, or specific phobia of vomiting, is an anxiety disorder classified under specific phobias in DSM-5 and ICD-11. It mostly begins in childhood, affects far more women than men, and is treated mainly with exposure-based CBT.

Excoriation disorder

Excoriation disorder, also called skin-picking disorder or dermatillomania, is a DSM-5 obsessive-compulsive and related disorder involving recurrent skin picking causing lesions; prevalence about 3.45%, treated with habit reversal therapy, SSRIs, and N-acetyl cysteine.

Exposure and response prevention

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is a cognitive-behavioral therapy in which patients deliberately confront feared stimuli while refraining from compulsions, the first-line psychological treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, typically over 12 to 20 sessions.

Exposure therapy

Exposure therapy, also called in vivo, imaginal, or interoceptive exposure and including flooding and ERP, is a behavior therapy for anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD that uses repeated confrontation with feared stimuli; mechanisms debated between habituation and inhibitory learning models.

False pregnancy

False pregnancy (pseudocyesis, phantom pregnancy) is a rare psychosomatic syndrome in which a nonpregnant person believes they are pregnant and shows real pregnancy signs, with negative hCG tests and ultrasound, treated with imaging confirmation plus psychological care.

Fear of cancer

Fear of cancer (carcinophobia, ICD-11 MG24.0) ranges from common population cancer worry to clinical nosophobia, illness anxiety disorder, and fear of cancer recurrence in survivors; treated with CBT.

Fear of cardiovascular disease

Fear of cardiovascular disease, known as cardiophobia or heart-focused anxiety, is a specific phobia involving repeated chest pain and palpitations with fear of heart attack, classified as ICD-11 code MG24.7.

Fear of death or dying

Fear of death or dying (death anxiety), ICD-11 code MG23, is fear of one's own and others' mortality; a transdiagnostic construct linked to anxiety, depression, and hypochondriasis, measured mainly by the Templer Death Anxiety Scale.

Fear of disease

Fear of disease is excessive anxiety about having or acquiring illness. It includes nosophobia, fear of one specific disease, and illness anxiety disorder, the DSM-5 name for hypochondria.

Fear of flying

Fear of flying (aerophobia, aviophobia) is a situational specific phobia affecting an estimated 10–40% of people, about 25 million U.S. adults. Treated mainly with exposure-based CBT and virtual reality exposure therapy.

Fear of human immunodeficiency virus

Fear of human immunodeficiency virus (ICD-11 MG24.1), also called HIV phobia, serophobia, or AIDS phobia, is a classified disease-fear condition: persistent, irrational fear of contracting HIV despite negative tests, first described 1983, closely tied to HIV stigma and testing anxiety.

Fear of the dark

Fear of the dark, clinically nyctophobia (also scotophobia, lygophobia), is a specific phobia of darkness causing panic, insomnia, and avoidance; common in children, treated with CBT and exposure therapy.

Feeding difficulties

Feeding difficulties are problems with eating or drinking, ranging from picky eating to pediatric feeding disorder; in adults, the equivalent problem is usually dysphagia, a swallowing disorder.

GAD-2

The GAD-2 is a two-item self-report questionnaire screening for probable generalized anxiety disorder, the ultra-brief version of the seven-item GAD-7, with a recommended cut-off score of 3.