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.

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.

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.)

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.

Age discrimination

Age discrimination is or group on the grounds of age. Although theoretically the word can refer to the discrimination against any age group, age discrimination usually comes in one of three forms: discrimination against youth (also called adultism), discrimination against those 40 years old or older , and discrimination against elderly people.

In the United States, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits employment discrimination nationwide based on age with respect to employees 40 years of age or older. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act also addresses the difficulty older workers face in obtaining new employment after being displaced from their jobs, arbitrary age limits.

Melancholia

Melancholia (from Greek μελαγχολία - melancholia, it also has a number of other names: lugubriousness, from the Latin lug ere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, see Saturn (mythology)), in contemporary usage, it is a mood disorder of non-specific depression, characterized by low levels of enthusiasm and eagerness for activity.

In a modern context, "melancholy" applies only to the mental or emotional symptoms of depression or despondency; historically, "melancholia" could be physical as well as mental, and melancholic conditions were classified as such by their common cause rather than by their properties. Similarly, melancholia in ancient usage also encompassed mental disorders which might now be classed as schizophrenias or bipolar disorders.

Non-human

Psychopathology in non-human primates has been studied since the mid 20th century. Over 20 behavioral patterns in captive chimpanzees have been documented as (statistically) abnormal for their frequency, severity or oddness - some of which have also been observed in the wild. Captive great apes show gross behavioral abnormalities such as stereotypy of movements, self-mutilation, disturbed emotional reactions (mainly fear or aggression) towards companions, lack of species-typical communications, and generalized learned helplessness. In some cases such behaviors are hypothesized to be equivalent to symptoms associated with psychiatric disorders in humans such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. Concepts of antisocial, borderline and schizoid personality disorders have also been applied to non-human great apes.

The risk of anthropomorphism is often raised with regard to such comparisons, and assessment of non-human animals cannot incorporate evidence from linguistic communication. However, available evidence may range from nonverbal behaviors - including physiological responses and homologous facial displays and acoustic utterances - to neurochemical studies. It is pointed out that human psychiatric classification is often based on statistical description and judgment of behaviors (especially when speech or language is impaired) and that the use of verbal self-report is itself problematic and unreliable.