864 articles
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospital: inpatient facility for treating mental disorders, historically the asylum (first U.S. example 1752, over 500,000 patients by the 1950s), transformed by deinstitutionalization after chlorpromazine and the 1963 Community Mental Health Centers Act.
Psychiatric interview
The psychiatric interview is a clinical method in which a psychiatrist systematically questions and observes a patient to assess mental symptoms, establish diagnoses, and guide treatment planning.
Psychiatric Nursing
Psychiatric nursing (psychiatric-mental health nursing), specialty nursing field caring for people with mental illness in hospitals, community, and primary care; history from 1882 McLean Asylum training school, therapeutic relationship focus, and trial evidence on nurse-delivered interventions.
Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Psychiatric rehabilitation (psychosocial rehabilitation, PSR) helps people with severe mental illness live independently in the community. Emerged in the 1970s from deinstitutionalization; key models include ACT, IPS supported employment, and supportive housing.
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a medical doctor specializing in mental health, including substance use disorders, trained through medical school and residency to prescribe medications, provide psychotherapy, and perform medical treatments.
Psychiatry
Psychiatry, the medical specialty for mental, behavioral, and personality disorders; also called psychological medicine. Physicians trained ~12 years; DSM-based diagnosis since 1952; treatments include psychotherapy, medication, and community-based care.
Psychiatry research
Psychiatry Research is an Elsevier peer-reviewed journal founded in 1979 (ISSN 0165-1781), covering biological, psychological, and treatment research in psychiatry; distinct from the 2016-independent spin-off Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.
Psycho-oncology
Psycho-oncology, or psychosocial oncology, is the oncology subspecialty addressing psychological, social, and ethical aspects of cancer for patients and families, spanning distress screening, psychotherapy, and multidisciplinary supportive care.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis: Freud-derived talk therapy and personality theory using free association, the couch, and transference interpretation; 3–5 weekly sessions over years; effect sizes 1.27 pre/post; distinct from briefer psychodynamic therapy and CBT.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy, often used interchangeably with psychodynamic psychotherapy, is a talk-based treatment working with unconscious conflicts, defenses, and transference; it is less intensive than classical psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic review
The Psychoanalytic Review, founded 1913 by White and Jelliffe, is the first English-language psychoanalytic journal, official journal of NPAP since 1958, published quarterly by Guilford, editor Paul Marcus.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy
Psychodynamic psychotherapy: talking treatments derived from Freud's psychoanalysis exploring unconscious processes, early experience, and the therapy relationship; manualized short-term forms show equivalence to CBT in trials.
Psychogenic movement disorders
Psychogenic movement disorders, now called functional movement disorders (FMD), are involuntary-appearing tremor, jerks, dystonia, or gait problems caused by reversible brain network dysfunction, not structural damage; diagnosed by positive signs like distractibility and entrainment, treated with physiotherapy and CBT.
Psychogenic pruritus
Psychogenic pruritus, or functional itch disorder, is chronic itch without dermatologic or systemic cause, driven by psychological factors; FPDG criteria, ICD-11 EC90.4, treated with psychotherapy and neuroactive drugs.
Psychological first aid
Psychological first aid (PFA) is supportive, non-intrusive assistance providing safety, calming, and practical help to people in the hours to weeks after disasters and emergencies.
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma, also called emotional trauma, is a distressing experience that overwhelms a person's capacity to cope and can lead to PTSD, depression, or substance abuse.
Psychomotor agitation
Psychomotor agitation: restlessness with increased motor activity in psychiatric, neurological, and drug-related conditions; ICD-11 and MeSH definitions, causes, scales, and emergency management.
Psychomotor retardation
Psychomotor retardation: generalized slowing of movement and speech in depression, Parkinson's disease, catatonia and related disorders; linked to striatal dopamine, measured by actigraphy, CORE and reaction-time tasks.
Psychopathography of Adolf Hitler
Psychopathography of Adolf Hitler: retrospective psychiatric and psychoanalytic diagnoses of the dictator, from the 1940 Lancet debate and Langer's 1943 OSS profile to Redlich's 1999 medical review, the Pasewalk myth, and 2025 DNA claims.
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the scientific study of mental disorders, their symptoms, etiology, diagnosis, and treatment, historically organized by DSM and ICD classifications and increasingly studied through dimensional frameworks such as HiTOP and RDoC.
Psychopathy
Psychopathy: personality construct of shallow affect, lack of empathy or remorse, manipulativeness, and antisocial lifestyle; not a DSM/ICD diagnosis (ASPD is closest). Assessed mainly by Hare's PCL-R, a 20-item, 0-40 forensic rating scale with cut-off 30.
Psychosexual disorder
Psychosexual disorder, also called psychosexual dysfunction, is a former DSM-III (1980) psychiatric category covering sexual dysfunctions, paraphilias, and gender identity conditions; ICD-11 (2022) replaced it with the chapter Conditions Related to Sexual Health.
Psychosis
Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality marked by hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking; it occurs in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other conditions, affects 15–100 per 100,000 yearly, and is treated with antipsychotics and coordinated specialty care.
Psychosocial Functioning
Psychosocial functioning is how well a person performs everyday social, occupational, and personal roles, and it is a MeSH descriptor used as a treatment outcome in mental health research.
Psychosocial intervention
A psychosocial intervention, also called a psychological intervention, is a non-drug approach such as therapy or support groups that targets the psychological and social dimensions of illness.
Psychosomatic medicine
Psychosomatic medicine: field studying psychological, behavioral, and social factors in disease; also called consultation-liaison psychiatry; Heinroth coined the term in 1818; US subspecialty since 2003.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, treats mental disorders through structured dialogue and psychological methods. Key approaches include CBT, psychodynamic, humanistic, and integrative therapies; overall effect size SMD 0.34, comparable to medication.
Psychotherapy, Imagery
Psychotherapy, imagery (MeSH D019018, guided imagery): use of imagined mental images as psychotherapy, spanning guided affective imagery, imagery rescripting, and imagery rehearsal therapy, applied to PTSD, anxiety, depression, and nightmares.
Psychotic depression
Psychotic depression (delusional depression): major depression with delusions or hallucinations, often mood-congruent guilt, poverty, or nihilism. Treated with antidepressant plus antipsychotic or ECT; ECT is highly effective.
PTSD Symptom Scale
The PTSD Symptom Scale (PSS) is a brief trauma measure, in interview and self-report versions, that yields a PTSD diagnosis and a severity score; Foa and colleagues published it in 1993.