Mental health

Arguments for and against drug prohibition

Drug prohibition: criminalizing production, sale, and possession of psychoactive substances under UN treaties since 1912. Weighs deterrence and price effects against black-market violence, enforcement costs, and decriminalization evidence from Portugal, Oregon, and Thailand.

Art therapy

Art therapy is a mental health profession using art-making within a psychotherapeutic relationship, practiced by master's-level credentialed clinicians (ATR, ATR-BC). Origins: Prinzhorn 1923, Naumburg and Adrian Hill 1940s; professional bodies AATA and BAAT.

Asperger syndrome

Asperger syndrome, also called Asperger's, was a diagnosis for autistic people without learning disability, described by Hans Asperger in 1944 and named by Lorna Wing in 1981; retired into autism spectrum disorder by DSM-5 (2013) and ICD-11 (2019).

Assertive community treatment

Assertive community treatment (ACT) is a community-based mental health care model in which a multidisciplinary team delivers intensive, individualized treatment and support to people with severe mental illness.

Assertiveness

Assertiveness: an adaptive communication style of expressing feelings and needs directly while respecting others, between passivity and aggression. Also called assertiveness training; rooted in Salter's 1949 behavior therapy, now studied in healthcare speaking-up and social anxiety treatment.

Assertiveness training

Assertiveness training, also called assertion training, is a behavioral therapy technique that teaches people to express their needs, wishes, opinions, and feelings directly, reducing anxiety through cognitive restructuring and role play.

Attachment disorder

Attachment disorder covers two childhood diagnoses, reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED), arising from severe early neglect; DSM-5 split them, and coercive attachment therapy is discredited.

Attachment therapy

Attachment therapy: umbrella term for treatments aiming to improve children's attachment relationships, from evidence-based caregiver interventions to condemned coercive holding and rebirthing methods linked to deaths.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a neurodevelopmental condition of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity beginning before age 12; three DSM-5 presentations, no single diagnostic test, treated with stimulants, CBT, and parent training.

Atypical depression

Atypical depression, a major depressive disorder subtype with mood reactivity plus hypersomnia, hyperphagia, leaden paralysis, and rejection sensitivity; MAOI-responsive, immunometabolically distinct from melancholic depression.

Auditory hallucination

Auditory hallucination: hearing sounds or voices without external stimulus; verbal subtype (AVH) affects 60-80% of schizophrenia patients and 10-15% of healthy people; explained by corollary discharge failure and inner-speech misattribution.

Autism rights movement

Autism rights movement, core of the neurodiversity movement: autistic-led social movement since the 1990s (ANI, Jim Sinclair, ASAN 2006) rejecting the medical model and cure of autism, seeking civil rights, acceptance, and services instead.

Autism spectrum

Autism spectrum (autism spectrum disorder, ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition marked by social communication differences and restricted, repetitive behaviors. Key facts: US prevalence 1 in 31 eight-year-olds (CDC 2022), over 3:1 male-to-female ratio, DSM-5 criteria, Kanner 1943 origins, vaccines ruled out as a cause.

Autism spectrum disorder due to AUTS2 deficiency

AUTS2 syndrome (autism spectrum disorder due to AUTS2 deficiency, OMIM 615834) is a rare autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder from AUTS2 gene loss at 7q11.22, causing intellectual disability, autism, microcephaly, hypotonia, and dysmorphic features.

Autogenic training

Autogenic training is a self-relaxation technique developed by Johannes Heinrich Schultz in 1920, in which repeated verbal formulas induce calm and are studied for stress, anxiety, and chronic pain.

Automatism

Automatism: involuntary, unconscious mechanical behavior, from 19th-century reflex physiology and psychological automatisms (Myers, Janet, de Clérambault) to epileptic automatisms (ICD-11 MB45.1) and the sane versus insane automatism defense in criminal law.

AUTON'HOME study

AUTON'HOME (NCT07317388) is an observational study at Centre hospitalier de Ville-Evrard, France, testing a 10-session, 2-hour group psychoeducation program in a training apartment to build home autonomy for adults with severe mood or psychotic disorders.

Autophobia

Autophobia, also called monophobia, eremophobia, or isolophobia, is an intense irrational fear of being alone, diagnosed as a specific phobia and treated mainly with exposure therapy and CBT.

Autosomal dominant intellectual disability-craniofacial dysmorphism-macrocephaly-hypotonia syndrome due to H1-4 mutation

Rahman syndrome, also called HIST1H1E or H1-4-related neurodevelopmental disorder, is an ultra-rare autosomal dominant disorder caused by de novo C-terminal frameshift variants in H1-4, causing intellectual disability, hypotonia, macrocephaly, dysmorphic facies, and skeletal, cardiac, thyroid, and ectodermal features.

Avatar therapy

Avatar therapy is a psychological therapy in which a person who hears distressing voices dialogues with a computer-generated avatar of the voice, first reported by Julian Leff in 2013.

Avoidant or restrictive eating

Avoidant or restrictive eating (ICD-11 MB29.0) is a limited diet defined by dietary composition or sensory features inconsistent with cultural norms; when persistent and harmful it is ARFID (6B83), an eating disorder without body-image concerns, introduced in DSM-5 2013 and ICD-11.

Avoidant personality disorder

Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD): a Cluster C personality disorder of social inhibition, inadequacy feelings, and rejection hypersensitivity; four of seven DSM criteria required; prevalence about 1.5%-2.5%; overlaps controversially with social anxiety disorder.

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), also called avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, is an eating disorder added to DSM-5 in 2013, marked by restricted eating from sensory sensitivity, fear of aversive consequences, or lack of interest, without weight or shape concerns.

Avolition

Avolition, reduced initiation and persistence of goal-directed activity, is a core negative symptom of schizophrenia, central in symptom networks, a strong predictor of poor functional outcome, and currently lacking approved drug treatment.

Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca (yagé, natema) is an Amazonian psychoactive brew of Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis; β-carboline MAO-A inhibition makes orally ingested DMT active, producing a 4-6 hour experience, with legal status varying by country.

Bad trip

Bad trip, also called challenging experience or acute psychedelic crisis: intense fear, anxiety, or paranoia during psychedelic intoxication (psilocybin, LSD, DMT). 39% of psilocybin users rate their worst as a lifetime top-five challenge; 2.6% seek medical help.