Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Conduct disorder

Conduct disorder is one of the most common disorders in children and adolescents in general population. Conduct disorder or CD involves a number of persistent patterns of problematic behaviors, including oppositional and defiant behaviors and antisocial activities including lying, stealing, destruction of property, deceitful, running away, physical violence and sexually coercive behaviors.

A child is diagnosed with conduct disorder when the symptoms continue for 6 months or more. CD is also known as a "disruptive behavior disorder" due to its impact on a child or adolescents family, school and people around them.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Dependent personality disorder

Dependent personality disorder (DPD), formerly known as asthenic personality disorder is a personality disorder that is characterized by a pervasive psychological dependence on other people. The difference between a 'dependent personality' and a 'dependent personality disorder' is somewhat subjective, which makes a diagnosis sensitive to cultural influences such as gender role expectations.

Clinical interest in dependent personality disorder has existed since Karl Abraham first described the oral character. As a disorder, the personality type first appeared in a War Department technical bulletin in 1945 and later in the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952 (American Psychiatric Association, 1952) as a subtype of passive-aggressive personality disorder. Since then, a surprising number of studies have upheld the descriptive validity of dependent personality traits, viewed as submissiveness, oral character traits, oral dependence, or passive dependence, or as a constellation of both pathological and adaptive traits under the rubric dependency.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Panic disorder

Panic Disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurring severe panic attacks. It may also include significant behavioral change lasting at least a month, and of ongoing worry about the implications or concern about having other attacks. The latter is called Anticipatory Attacks (DSM-IVR). It is important to note that panic disorder is not the same as agoraphobia, although a great deal of people with panic disorder also suffer from agoraphobia.

Panic Disorder sufferers usually have a series of intense episodes of extreme anxiety during panic attacks. These attacks typically last about ten minutes, but can be as short-lived as 1–5 minutes and last as long as twenty minutes or until medical intervention. However, attacks can wax and wane for a period of hours — panic attacks rolling into one another. They may vary in intensity and specific symptoms of panic over the duration (i.e. rapid heartbeat, perspiration, dizziness, dyspnea, trembling, psychological experience of uncontrollable fear, hyperventilation, etc.)

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Cognition

Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines, but is generally accepted to mean the process of thought. For example, in psychology and cognitive science it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of concepts; individual minds, groups, organizations, and even larger coalitions of entities, can be modeled as societies which cooperate to form concepts. The autonomous elements of each 'society' would have the opportunity to demonstrate emergent behavior in the face of some crisis or opportunity. Cognition can also be interpreted as "understanding and trying to make sense of the world".

The term cognition (Latin: cognoscere, "to know" or "to recognize") refers to a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences. Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial, conscious or unconscious. These processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, anesthesia, neurology, psychology, philosophy, systemic and computer science.