Mood Swing States
This disorder involves a long-lasting low mood and loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed.
What is Major Depressive Disorder?
This disorder involves constant, wide-ranging worry about everyday things for at least six months.
What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
This PD involves an inflated sense of self-importance and a need for admiration.
What is narcissistic personality disorder?
This disorder involves disturbances in thinking, perception, and emotions, often including hallucinations and delusions.
What is schizophrenia?
These repetitive behaviors or mental acts are performed to reduce anxiety, even if only for a moment.
What are compulsions?
People in this state may sleep very little, talk rapidly, and feel extremely energized or invincible.
What is a manic episode?
A sudden surge of intense fear that peaks within minutes, with symptoms like racing heart and dizziness.
What is a panic attack?
This PD disorder involves intense mood swings, fear of abandonment, and unstable relationships.
What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
Hearing voices that aren’t really there is an example of this type of false sensory experience.
What is a hallucination?
These are the intrusive, unwanted thoughts or images that drive the urge to perform rituals.
What are obsessions?
This term describes switching between depressive episodes and manic or hypomanic episodes.
What is Bipolar Disorder?
This disorder involves strong fear of being judged or embarrassed in social situations.
What is Social Anxiety Disorder?
People with this PD disorder want closeness but avoid others because they fear criticism or rejection.
What is Avoidant Personality Disorder?
This term refers to a firmly held false belief (like thinking the FBI is tracking your thoughts) even when there’s clear evidence it isn’t true.
What is a delusion?
People with OCD get stuck in this cycle where relief from a ritual actually strengthens the behavior over time.
What is negative reinforcement?
This cognitive pattern common in depression involves repeatedly dwelling on negative thoughts in a loop.
What is rumination?
This disorder pairs intrusive thoughts with repetitive behaviors intended to reduce distress.
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
This PD disorder includes odd beliefs, unusual thinking, and discomfort in close relationships.
What is Schizotypal Personality Disorder?
People with schizophrenia often show these two brain differences: larger fluid-filled spaces and reduced tissue in the frontal lobes.
What are enlarged ventricles and reduced gray matter (or reduced frontal lobe activity)?
OCD symptoms often improve when medications increase levels of this neurotransmitter.
What is serotonin?
This widely used self-report measure asks people to rate symptoms like hopelessness, irritability, and sleep changes on a 0–3 scale. It helps gauge severity rather than give a diagnosis.
What is the Beck Depression Inventory?
This conditioning process helps explain how phobias form when a neutral cue becomes linked with fear after a negative experience.
What is classical conditioning?
This term describes when traits across personality disorders overlap and blend together, making diagnosis less clear-cut than the DSM categories suggest.
What is comorbidity?
In schizophrenia, this neurotransmitter system is often overactive, which is one reason medications that block its receptors can reduce symptoms.
What is the dopamine system?
This term describes when a person seeks reassurance (from others or online) to ease their anxiety, but ends up feeding the cycle.