Typical Signs and

Symptoms of
Psychopathology
Learning Objectives

◦ Understand the purpose of identifying signs and

symptoms of mental disorders
◦ Understand what are signs, symptoms, and
syndromes in abnormal psychology.
◦ Learn the different forms of disturbances associated
in abnormal psychology.
The Need for Identifying Signs and
Symptoms of Mental Disorders

◦ To make accurate diagnoses

◦ To carry out effective treatments
◦ To offer reliable prognoses
◦ To analyze psychiatric issues as fully as possible
◦ To ensure fruitful communication among clinicians
What makes up psychopathology
◦ Sign – observation and objective finding, something
that can be directly observed in the patient.
◦ Symptom – subjective experience described by the
patient, directly reported by the individual.
◦ Syndrome – Group of signs and symptoms that make
up a recognizable condition.
Consciousness: State of awareness of
the individual
Disturbances in consciousness
Disturbances in attention
Disturbances in suggestibility
Disturbances in Consciousness
◦ Impairment in perception and sensorium
◦ Most often associated with brain pathology
◦ Disorientation – disturbance of orientation in time,
place, or person.
◦ Clouding of consciousness – incomplete clear
mindedness with disturbances in perception and
attitudes.
◦ Stupor – lack of reaction to an unawareness of
surroundings.
◦ Coma – profound degree of unconsciousness
◦ Somnolence – abnormal drowsiness
Disturbances in Attention
◦ Inability to focus on certain portions of experience, to
focus on one activity or to concentrate.
◦ Distractibility – attention is drawn to unimportant
external stimuli.
◦ Hypervigilance – excessive attention and focus on all
internal and external stimuli.
◦ Trance – focused attention and altered consciousness
Disturbances in Suggestibility
◦ Compliant and uncritical response to an idea or
influence.
◦ Folie a Deux/a Trois – communicated emotional
illness between two/three persons.
◦ Hypnosis – artificially induced modification of
consciousness characterized by a heightened
suggestibility.
Emotion
Complex feeling state with psychic, somatic and behavioral
components.
Affect
◦ Observed expression of emotion, can be directly seen
by the clinician.
◦ Can possibly be inconsistent with description of
emotion.
◦ Appropriate – emotional tone in harmony with
accompanying idea, thought or speech.
◦ Inappropriate – disharmony between emotional; tone
and idea, thought or speech.
◦ Flat or Blunted – severe reduction in intensity of
external feeling tone
◦ Restricted or Constricted – reduction in intensity of
feeling tone less severe than blunted affect.
◦ Labile – rapid and abrupt changes in emotional
feeling tone, unrelated to external stimuli, “mood
swings”
Mood
◦ Pervasive and sustained emotion, subjectively experienced
and reported.
◦ Dysphoric – unpleasant mood
◦ Euthymic – normal range of mood
◦ Expansive – expression of feelings without restraint
◦ Irritable – easily annoyed and provoked to anger
◦ Elevated – mood more cheerful than usual
◦ Elation – feelings of joy, triumph, intense self-satisfaction or
optimism
◦ Euphoria – intense elation with feelings of grandeur
◦ Ecstasy – feelings of intense pleasure
◦ Depression – psychopathological feeling of sadness
◦ Labile – oscillations between euphoria and depressions or
anxiety
◦ Anhedonia – loss of interest in all pleasurable activities
◦ Alixethymia – inability in describing emotions
Other Emotions
◦ Anxiety – feeling of apprehension caused by anticipation of
internal or external threat
◦ Free-floating anxiety – pervasive unfocused fear not
attached to any idea
◦ Fear – anxiety caused by consciously recognized and
realistic danger
◦ Agitation – severe anxiety associated with motor
restlessness
◦ Apathy – dulled emotional tone associated with detachment
and indifference
◦ Ambivalence – two opposing impulses toward the same
thing in the same person at the same time
◦ Shame – failure to live up to self-expectations
◦ Guilt – emotion secondary to doing what is perceived as
wrong
Physiological Disturbances associated
with Mood
◦ Signs of somatic dysfunction most often associated with
depression; also called vegetative signs
◦ Anorexia – loss of or decrease in appetite
◦ Bulimia – insatiable hunger and voracious eating
◦ Hyperphagia – increase in appetite and intake of food
◦ Insomnia – lack or diminished ability to sleep
◦ Hypersomnia – excessive sleeping
◦ Constipation – inability to defecate or difficulty in
defecating
Motor Behavior or Conation
Aspect of psyche that includes impulses, motivations,
wishes, drives, instincts, and cravings expressed by
behavior or motor activity
Disturbances in Motor Behavior
◦ Echopraxia – pathological imitation of movements of one
person by another
◦ Catalepsy – immobile position that is constantly maintained
◦ Cataplexy – temporary loss of muscle tone and weakness
precipitated by a variety of emotional states
◦ Negativism – motiveless resistance to all attempts to be
moved or to all instructions
Thinking
Goal directed flow of ideas, symbols, associations initiated
by a problem or a task and leading toward a reality-
oriented conclusion; characterized by a logical sequence.
General Disturbances in Form and
Process of Thinking
◦ Reality Testing – objective evaluation and judgment of the
world outside the self
◦ Psychosis – inability to distinguish reality from fantasy;
impaired reality testing
◦ Autistic thinking – preoccupation with inner, private world
◦ Magical thinking – similar preoperational phase in children;
thoughts, words or actions assume power
Specific Disturbances in Form of
Thinking
◦ Circumstantiality – indirect speech that is delayed in
reaching the point but eventually gets from original point to
desired goal
◦ Tangentiality – inability to have a goal-directed
associations of thought
◦ Loosening of associations – flow of thought in which ideas
shift from one subject to another in a completely unrelated
way
◦ Flight of ideas – rapid, continuous verbalizations or play on
words creating constant shifting from one idea to another
Specific Disturbances in Content of
Thought
◦ Delusion – false belief based on incorrect inference about
external reality; not consistent with one’s intelligence and
cultural background; cannot be corrected by reasoning
◦ Overvalued idea – unreasonable, sustained false belief
maintained less firmly than a delusion
◦ Obsession – pathological persistence of an irresistible
thought or feeling that cannot be eliminated from
consciousness by logical effort
◦ Phobia – persistent, irrational, exaggerated and invariably
pathological dread of a specific stimulus or situation
Speech
◦ Ideas, thoughts, feelings as expressed through language
◦ Communication through the use of words and language
◦ Pressure of speech – rapid, increased in amount and
difficult to interrupt
◦ Poverty of speech – restricted amount, replies may be
monosyllabic
◦ Poverty of content of speech – adequate amount but
conveys little information because of vagueness, emptiness,
or stereotyped phrases.
Perception
◦ Process of transferring physical stimulation into
psychological information
◦ Mental process by which sensory stimuli are brought to
awareness
◦ Hallucination – false sensory perception not associated with
real external stimuli
◦ Illusion – misperception or misinterpretation of real external
sensory stimuli
◦ Depersonalization – subjective sense of being unreal,
strange or unfamiliar
◦ Derealization – subjective sense that environment is strange
and unreal
Memory
Function by which information is stored in the brain is later
recalled to consciousness
Disturbances in Memory
• Amnesia – partial or total inability to recall past experience
• Anterograde – memory disturbance occurring after a point in time
• Retrograde – memory disturbance occurring before a point in time

• Paramnesia – falsification of memory by distortion of recall

• Déjà vu – illusion of visual recognition in which a new
situation is incorrectly perceived as a repetition of a
previous memory
• Jamais vu – false feeling of unfamiliarity with a real
situation that a person has experienced
Levels of Memory
• Immediate – reproduction or recall of perceived material
within seconds to minutes
• Recent – recall of events over past few days
• Recent past – recall of events over past few months
• Remote – recall of events in distant past
Intelligence
• Ability to understand, recall, mobilize, and constructively
integrate previous learning in meeting new situations
• Mental retardation – lack of intelligence resulting to
interference with social and vocational performance
• Dementia – organic and global deterioration of intellectual
functioning without clouding of consciousness
• Concrete thinking – literal thinking, limited use of metaphor
without understanding of nuances of meaning, one
dimensional thought
• Abstract thinking –ability to appreciate nuances of
meaning; multidimensional thinking with ability to use
metaphors and hypotheses appropriately
Insight
• Ability to understand the true cause and meaning of a
situation
• Intellectual insight – understanding of objective reality of set
of circumstances without ability to apply understanding in
any useful way to master situation
• True emotional insight – understanding of objective reality
of a situation coupled with motivation and emotional
impetus to master situation
• Impaired insight – diminished ability to understand objective
reality of situation
Judgment
• Ability to assess a situation correctly and to act
appropriately in the situation
• Critical judgment – ability to assess, discern and choose
among various options in a situation
• Automatic judgment – reflex performance of an action
• Impaired judgment – diminished ability to understand a
situation correctly and to act appropriately