Psychiatry Notes 3 by DV

1. In synesthesia, the stimulation of one sensory modality produces a sensation belonging to another sensory modality (a color is perceived as a smell).
2. The capacity to generalize and to formulate concepts is called abstract thinking. The inability to abstract is called concreteness and is seen in organic disorders and sometimes in schizophrenia.
3. Huntington’s disease- progressive neurodegenerative, AD, 35- 40 yrs, manifested by progressive dementia, choreoathetoid movements and psychiatric symptoms. CT/MRI demonstrates gross atrophy of the putamen and the caudate.
4. Nonsuppression/ elevated cortisol in Dexamethasone Suppression test is seen in 40-50% of depressive patients and in 90% of psychotic depression.
5. Looseness of associations refers to a string of thoughts that are disconnected in content and are illogical in their sequence, sometimes called as ‘word salad’, seen in schizophrenia and mania.
6. Magical thinking is the belief that specific thoughts, words, or gestures can directly lead to the fulfillment of wishes. Such thinking is due to an unrealistic understanding of the relationship between cause and effect.
7. Obsessions are recurrent thoughts, ideas, or impulses that cannot be eliminated from consciousness by reasoning or desire to stop them. Obsessions are characteristic symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder and are usually ego-dystonic. A compulsion is a repetitive behavior or a ritual that is performed to avoid future unpleasant events. Compulsions have an urgent quality and resisting them generates anxiety.
8. The appearance of regressive behaviors and fears during the oedipal period as an attempt to withdraw from the conflicts caused by the intensity of the oedipal longing for the parent of the opposite sex is called as Infantile Neurosis, in Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
9. An inherited set of personality traits such as adaptability, intensity of reaction, threshold of responsiveness and others is known as temperament, difficult temperament of the child results in impaired parent-child relationship.