864 articles
Passionate and companionate love
Passionate and companionate love: Berscheid and Hatfield's two-type taxonomy of romantic love. Passionate love is intense longing for union; companionate love is deep affectionate attachment, measured by the Passionate Love Scale and Rubin's Love Scale.
Pathological demand avoidance
Pathological demand avoidance (PDA), also called extreme demand avoidance, is a proposed autism profile marked by anxiety-driven avoidance of everyday demands and need for control; coined by Elizabeth Newson in the 1980s, it is not in DSM-5 or ICD-11 and its validity as a syndrome is debated.
Pathological jealousy
Pathological jealousy, also called morbid jealousy, delusional jealousy, or Othello syndrome, is a psychiatric condition of unfounded preoccupation with a partner's infidelity, occurring in obsessive and delusional subtypes with neurological, psychiatric, and substance-related causes.
Patric Gagne
Patric Gagne, born Patricia Gagne, is an American writer and former therapist known for Sociopath: A Memoir, her 2024 New York Times bestselling account of living as a self-described sociopath.
Pedophilic disorder
Pedophilic disorder (ICD-11 6D32) is a paraphilic disorder defined by sustained sexual arousal to prepubertal children, diagnosed only with distress, impairment, or acting on urges; DSM-5 rejected a pedohebephilia revision.
PEHO-like syndrome
PEHO-like syndrome (ORPHA:99807, OMIM 617507) is a rare genetic infantile encephalopathy with hypsarrhythmic seizures, edema, hypotonia, and dysmorphism, but lacking the optic atrophy and cerebellar atrophy of PEHO syndrome; genetically heterogeneous.
Penoscrotodynia
Penoscrotodynia, also known as dysaesthetic penoscrotodynia or male genital burning syndrome, is a rare condition of men involving genital pain or burning with no identifiable cause.
Perfectionism (psychology)
Perfectionism (psychology): a personality trait of excessively high standards and overly critical self-evaluation, measured by the FMPS and HMPS scales, a transdiagnostic risk factor for eating disorders, anxiety, OCD, and depression, treatable with CBT, and rising among college students since 1989.
Perpetrator trauma
Perpetrator trauma, also called perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS), is trauma arising from committing a wrong, first described among Vietnam War veterans in the 1970s.
Perphenazine
Perphenazine (Trilafon) is a high-potency first-generation piperazinyl phenothiazine antipsychotic for schizophrenia and severe nausea/vomiting; half-life 9-12 hours, CYP2D6-dependent, performed as well as atypicals in CATIE.
Persecutory delusion
Persecutory delusion: false fixed belief that others intend to harm one; the most common delusional theme (64.5% of clinical patients, >70% of first-episode psychosis), explained by worry, negative self-beliefs, insomnia, anomalous experience, and reasoning biases.
Person-centered therapy
Person-centered therapy, also called client-centered or Rogerian therapy, is a non-directive psychotherapy developed by American psychologist Carl Rogers in the 1940s, built on empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard.
Personality disorder
Personality disorder, also called personality pathology, is a mental disorder of rigid, maladaptive patterns of thinking, relating, and impulse control. ICD-11 (2022) replaced categories with severity levels plus five trait domains; DSM-5 keeps categories and an alternative dimensional model.
Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified
PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, atypical autism) was a DSM-IV residual autism-spectrum diagnosis for autistic-like social-communication impairment not meeting full autism criteria; DSM-5 (2013) and ICD-11 merged it into autism spectrum disorder.
Pervasive developmental disorders
Pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), also called autism spectrum disorders, were the ICD-10/DSM-IV category of five childhood-onset conditions (autistic disorder, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, Rett's, CDD) merged into autism spectrum disorder by DSM-5 in 2013.
Phallophobia
Phallophobia (ithyphallophobia, Medorthophobia) is the colloquial fear of the penis, especially erect; not a DSM-5/ICD-11 diagnosis, framed clinically as sexual aversion or sexual phobia, with conditioning, disgust, and religious-environment mechanisms and exposure-based treatment.
Pharmacology of antidepressants
The pharmacology of antidepressants covers drugs for major depressive disorder, from the 1950s discoveries of iproniazid and imipramine through SSRIs like Prozac to ketamine.
Pharmacopsychiatry
Pharmacopsychiatry (Pharmacopsychiatria) is a Thieme-published, AGNP-affiliated peer-reviewed journal of psychopharmacology and psychiatric neurobiology, published since 1984, ISSN 0176-3679/1439-0795, indexed in MEDLINE.
Phelan-McDermid syndrome
Phelan-McDermid syndrome, or 22q13.3 deletion syndrome, is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by SHANK3 haploinsufficiency, featuring developmental delay, absent speech, hypotonia, and autism spectrum disorder.
Philippa Perry
Philippa Perry, British psychotherapist and author of Couch Fiction, How to Stay Sane, and the bestseller The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read; Observer agony aunt; wife of Grayson Perry.
Phobia
Phobia: an intense, persistent fear of a specific object or situation, out of proportion to real danger. Covers specific phobia, agoraphobia, and social anxiety disorder; lifetime prevalence about 7.2%; treated mainly with exposure therapy, including virtual reality exposure.
Phonophobia
Phonophobia, fear of sound, is an anticipatory fear of and avoidance of sound in audiology, and migraine-related sound intolerance in neurology; distinct from hyperacusis and misophonia, treated with desensitization and counseling.
Pica (disorder)
Pica (disorder): eating nonfood, nonnutritive substances for at least one month, also called geophagy, amylophagy, pagophagia; DSM-5 eating disorder affecting children, pregnant women, and people with intellectual disability, linked to iron deficiency.
Picture superiority effect
Picture superiority effect (PSE): memory phenomenon, also called dual-coding advantage, in which pictures are remembered better than words. Named in Paivio & Csapo's 1973 work; distinctiveness experiments eliminated it in recognition.
Pitt-Hopkins syndrome
Pitt-Hopkins syndrome (PTHS, PHS) is a rare autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder caused by TCF4 haploinsufficiency at 18q21.2, with severe intellectual disability, absent speech, hyperventilation-apnea episodes, epilepsy, and distinctive facial features.
Planning fallacy
Planning fallacy, named by Kahneman and Tversky in 1979, is the tendency to underestimate task time, cost, and risk while overestimating benefits; corrected by reference class forecasting using outcomes of similar past projects.
Poetry therapy
Poetry therapy is a creative arts therapy in psychology that uses reading, writing, and discussing poetry to promote emotional expression, self-understanding, and healing in clinical and educational settings.
Poirier-Bienvenu neurodevelopmental syndrome
Poirier-Bienvenu neurodevelopmental syndrome (POBINDS, CSNK2B encephalopathy), a rare CSNK2B-related disorder with early-onset epilepsy, hypotonia, developmental delay, and intellectual disability; OMIM 618732, ORPHA 689397.
Poor concentration
Poor concentration (ICD-11 MB21.A; SNOMED CT 395614001) is difficulty focusing attention and sustaining mental energy to complete a task, a symptom seen in ADHD, depression, sleep deprivation, concussion, and functional cognitive disorders.
Pornography addiction
Pornography addiction, also called porn or sex addiction, is a popular label for compulsive pornography use but is not a DSM-5 or ICD-11 diagnosis; research uses problematic pornography use (PPU), with moral incongruence and low-quality treatment evidence.