| affective personality disorder | A disturbance of feelings or mood expressed as a milder form of depression and related emotional features that colour the whole psychic life and for which psychosocial stressors are believed to play the major role. (05 Mar 2000) |
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| seasonal affective disorder | A syndrome characterised by depressions that recur annually at the same time each year, usually during the winter months. Other symptoms include anxiety, irritability, decreased energy, increased appetite (carbohydrate cravings), increased duration of sleep, and weight gain. Sad (seasonal affective disorder) can be treated by daily exposure to bright artificial lights (phototherapy), during the season of recurrence. (12 Dec 1998) |
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| antisocial personality disorder | <psychiatry> An individual who engages in deviant behaviour with lack of remorse. (13 Jan 1998) |
| asthenic personality disorder | A personality type characterised by low energy level, easy fatigability, incapacity for enjoyment, lack of enthusiasm, and oversensitivity to physical and emotional stress. When appearing in marked form it becomes a psychological disorder (asthenic personality disorder), also called dependent personality. Synonym: asthenic personality disorder, dependent personality disorder. (05 Mar 2000) |
| borderline personality disorder | <psychiatry> An individual who is impulsive and unpredictable with fluctuations in intense moods. Occasionally psychotic. (27 Sep 1997) |
| paranoid personality disorder | A personality disorder characterised by the avoidance of accepting deserved blame and an unwarranted view of others as malevolent. The latter is expressed as suspiciousness, hypersensitivity, and mistrust. (12 Dec 1998) |
| passive-aggressive personality disorder | A personality disorder characterised by an indirect resistance to demands for adequate social and occupational performance; anger and opposition to authority and the expectations of others that is expressed covertly by obstructionism, procrastination, stubbornness, dawdling, forgetfulness, and intentional inefficiency. (12 Dec 1998) |
| personality disorder | General term for a group of behavioural disorder's characterised by usually lifelong, ingrained, maladaptive patterns of deviant behaviour, lifestyle, and social adjustment that are different in quality from psychotic and neurotic symptoms; former designations for individuals with these personality disorder's were psychopath and sociopath. See: antisocial personality disorder. (05 Mar 2000) |
| compulsive personality disorder | <psychology> A personality disorder which is characterised by the avoidance of feelings, emotion and intimacy within a framework of strict adherence to rules and order. (05 Jan 1998) |
| multiple personality disorder | A dissociative disorder in which the individual adopts two or more distinct personalities. Each personality is a fully integrated and complex unit with memories, behaviour patterns and social friendships. Transition from one personality to another is sudden. (12 Dec 1998) |
| cyclothymic personality disorder | A personality disorder in which a person experiences regularly alternating periods of elation and depression, (see bipolar illness) usually not related to external circumstances or situation. (27 Sep 1997) |
| schizoid personality disorder | An individual who is isolated, cold and indifferent. (27 Sep 1997) |
| schizotypal personality disorder | An individual who is eccentric with ideas, reference, magical thinking and suspicious. (27 Sep 1997) |
| histrionic personality disorder | An individual who is dramatic, engaging, self-centreed and attention seeking. (27 Sep 1997) |
| narcissistic personality disorder | An individual with an inflated sense of self-importance. (27 Sep 1997) |
| dependent personality disorder | An individual who fears separation and engaging othhers to assume responsibility (27 Sep 1997) |