anxiety Mood state characterized by marked negative affect and bodily symptoms of tension in which a person apprehensively anticipates future danger or misfortune Anxiety may involve feelings behaviors and physiological responses fear Emotion of an immediate alarm reaction to present danger or lifethreatening emergencies panic Sudden overwhelming fright or terror panic attack Abrupt experience of intense fear or discomfort accompanied by several physical symptoms such as dizziness or heart palpitations behavioral inhibition system Brain circuit in the limbic system that responds to threat signals by inhibiting activity and causing anxiety fight flight Brain circuit in animals that when stimulated causes an immediate alarm and escape response resembling human panic generalized anxiety disorder Anxiety disorder characterized by intense uncontrollable unfocused chronic and continuous worry that is distressing and unproductive accompanied by physical symptoms of tenseness irritability and restlessness panic disorder with agoraphobia Fear and avoidance of situations the person believes might induce a dreaded panic attack agoraphobia Anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult panic disorder without agoraphobia Panic attacks experienced without development of agoraphobia panic control treatment Cognitive behavioral treatment for panic attacks involving gradual exposure to feared somatic sensations and modification of perceptions and attitudes about them specific phobia Unreasonable fear of a specific object or situation that markedly interferes with daily life functioning blood injury injection phobia Unreasonable fear and avoidance of exposure to blood injury or the possibility of an injection Victims experience fainting and a drop in blood pressure situation phobia Anxiety involving enclosed places for example claustrophobia or public transportation for example fear of flying natural environment phobia Fear of situations or events in nature especially heights storms and water animal phobia Unreasonable enduring fear of animals or insects that usually develops early in life separation anxiety Excessive enduring fear in some children that harm will come to them or their parents while they are apart social phobia Extreme enduring irrational fear and avoidance of social or performance situations post traumatic stress disorder Enduring distressing emotional disorder that follows exposure to a severe helplessness or fearinducing threat The victim reexperiences the trauma avoids stimuli associated with it and develops a numbing of responsiveness and an increased vigilance and arousal acute stress disorder Severe reaction immediately following a terrifying event often including amnesia about the event emotional numbing and derealization Many victims later develop posttraumatic stress disorder OCD Anxiety disorder involving unwanted persistent intrusive thoughts and impulses as well as repetitive actions intended to suppress them obsessions Recurrent intrusive thought or impulse the client seeks to suppress or neutralize while recognizing it is not imposed by outside forces compulsions Repetitive ritualistic time consuming behavior or mental act a person feels driven to perform somatoform disorder Pathological concern of individuals with the appearance or functioning of their bodies usually in the absence of any identifiable medical condition dissociative disorder Disorder in which individuals feel detached from themselves or their surroundings and feel reality experience and identity may disintegrate hypochondriasis Somatoform disorder involving severe anxiety over belief in having a disease process without any evident physical cause somatization disorder Somatoform disorder involving extreme and long lasting focus on multiple physical symptoms for which no medical cause is evident pain disorder Somatoform disorder featuring true pain but for which psychological factors play an important role in onset severity or maintenance conversion disorder Physical malfunctioning such as blindness or paralysis suggesting neurological impairment but with no organic pathology to account for it malingering Deliberate faking of a physical or psychological disorder motivated by gain factitious disorder Nonexistent physical or psychological disorder deliberately faked for no apparent gain except possibly sympathy and attention body dysmorphic disorder Somatoform disorder featuring a disruptive preoccupation with some imagined defect in appearance imagined ugliness derealization Situation in which the individual loses a sense of the reality of the external world depersonalization disorder Dissociative disorder in which feelings of depersonalization are so severe they dominate the individual s life and prevent normal functioning dissociative amnesia Dissociative disorder featuring the inability to recall personal information usually of a stressful or traumatic nature generalized amnesia Loss of memory of all personal information including identity localized or selective amnesia Memory loss limited to specific times and events particularly traumatic events dissociative fugue Dissociative disorder featuring sudden unexpected travel away from home along with an inability to recall the past sometimes with assumption of a new identity dissociative trance disorder Altered state of consciousness in which people firmly believe they are possessed by spirits considered a disorder only where there is distress and dysfunction dissociative identity disorder Disorder in which as many as 100 personalities or fragments of personalities coexist within one body and mind Formerly known as multiple personality disorder alters Shorthand term for alter ego one of the different personalities or identities in dissociative identity disorder