WORD KEY OF CASE FORMAT

Predisposing factors = are factors that initiate or promote the onset of any illness, disease, accident, or
behavioural response.
Perpetuating Factors =Precipitating factors refer to a specific event or trigger to the onset of the current
problem. Perpetuating factors are those that maintain the problem once it has become established.
Precipitating Factors = are factors that initiate or promote the onset of any illness, disease, accident, or
behavioural response.
Mode of onset
Abrupt= The onset is described as abrupt when it occurs within 48 hours
Acute= It is called acute when it occurs within more than 48 hours but less than two weeks
Sub-Acute= it is called when it occurs more than 2 weeks to a month.
Insidious: When the onset of illness is subtle, and the symptoms develop so gradually that it is difficult to
ascertain when the onset exactly occurred, it is known as insidious onset
Sleep
Nightmares =A nightmare is a disturbing dream associated with negative feelings, such as anxiety or fear
that awakens you.
Night terror= Night terrors are a sleep disorder in which a person quickly awakens from sleep in a terrified
state. The cause is unknown but night terrors are often triggered by fever, lack of sleep or periods of
emotional tension, stress or conflict.
Narcolepsy= Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder that affects the brain's ability to control sleep-
wake cycles. People with narcolepsy may feel rested after waking, but then feel very sleepy throughout
much of the day.
Somnolence= defined as a state of drowsiness or strong desire to fall asleep, may be characterized as
either a benign symptom, such as a state of drowsiness prior to falling asleep or, most commonly, as a
symptom of an underlying condition, such as a sleep disorder, anxiety, depression, or stress.
Hypersomnia= refers to medical conditions in which you repeatedly feel excessively tired during the day
(called excessive daytime sleepiness) or sleep longer than usual at night. It is different from feeling tired
due to lack of or interrupted sleep at night.
Sleep talking = the act of speaking during sleep. It's a type of parasomnia -- an abnormal behaviour that
takes place during sleep. It's a very common occurrence and is not usually considered a medical problem.
Sleep talkers normally speak for no more than 30 seconds per episode, but some people sleep talk many
times during a night.
Sleep walking = also known as somnambulism involves getting up and walking around while in a state of
sleep. More common in children than adults, sleepwalking is usually outgrown by the teen years.
Hypnogogic phenomenon = Hypnagogic hallucinations are imaginary images or sensations that seem real
and occur as a person is falling asleep. These are different from dreams, which a person experiences while
fully asleep. The term hypnopompic describes the period when a person wakes up. Hypnagogic defines the
period when a person falls asleep.
 Personal history
Childhood disorders
Truancy= the action of staying away from school without good reason.
Delinquency= defined as criminal behaviour committed by juveniles under the legal age of adulthood.
Obstinacy= the quality of being unreasonably determined, especially to act in a particular way and not to
change at all, despite what anyone else says.
Food Fads= describe a particular food or food group that is exaggerated in the routine diet or is eliminated
to cure a specific disease. Food faddism is labelled by some researchers as an unhealthy practice and is
often associated with eating disorders.
Febrile convulsions= A febrile convulsion is a fit or seizure that occurs in children aged between 6 months
and 6 years when they have a high fever. A febrile convulsion is not epilepsy and a short-lived fit will not
cause brain damage – even a long fit almost never causes harm.
Adolescent sexual activity
Masturbation= 'Masturbation' simply means stimulating the genitals, or other areas of your body, for
pleasure. Many young people feel guilty about masturbating, often due to religious or cultural beliefs. But
masturbation is actually healthy and normal.
Petting= kissing, caressing, and other sexual activity between partners that does not involve sexual
intercourse
Nature of personality
Paranoid personality= Individuals with paranoid personality disorder typically experience symptoms that
interfere with daily life. In general, people with this condition feel suspicious of others. While this mistrust
is unfounded, their distrust of others makes it difficult to form relationships and can interfere with many
aspects of life including at home, at school, and at work. People with PPD do not see their behaviours as
out of the ordinary but are perceived by others as hostile and suspicious.
The primary characteristic of this condition is a chronic and pervasive distrust and suspicion of others.
Other symptoms of paranoid personality disorder include:
 Feelings that they are being lied to, deceived, or exploited by other people
 May believe that friends, family, and romantic partners are untrustworthy and unfaithful
 Outbursts of anger in response to perceived deception
 Often described as cold, jealous, secretive, and serious
Schizoid personality = is a mental health condition marked by a consistent pattern of detachment from
and general disinterest in social relationships. People with schizoid personality disorder also have a limited
range of emotions when interacting with others.
Schizotypal personality = is a mental health condition marked by a consistent pattern of intense
discomfort with close relationships and social interactions. People with STPD have distorted views of
reality, superstitions and unusual behaviours.
Antisocial personality = is a deeply ingrained and rigid dysfunctional thought process that focuses on social
irresponsibility with exploitive, delinquent, and criminal behaviour with no remorse.
Borderline personality= is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself
and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing
emotions and behaviour, and a pattern of unstable relationships.
Histrionic personality= (HPD) is a mental health condition marked by intense, unstable emotions and a
distorted self-image. The word “histrionic” means “dramatic or theatrical. “For people with histrionic
personality disorder, their self-esteem depends on the approval of others and doesn’t come from a true
feeling of self-worth. They have an overwhelming desire to be noticed and often behave dramatically or
inappropriately to get attention.
Narcissistic personality = involves a pattern of self-centred, arrogant thinking and behaviour, a lack of
empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe
people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. This way of thinking and
behaving surfaces in every area of the narcissist's life: from work and friendships to family and love
relationships.
Avoidant personality = is characterized by feelings of extreme social inhibition, inadequacy, and sensitivity
to negative criticism and rejection. Yet the symptoms involve more than simply being shy or socially
awkward. Avoidant personality disorder causes significant problems that affect the ability to interact with
others and maintain relationships in day-to-day life. About 1% of the general population has avoidant
personality disorder.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a personality disorder that’s characterized by
extreme perfectionism, order, and neatness. People with OCPD will also feel a severe need to impose their
own standards on their outside environment.
People with OCPD have the following characteristics:
 They find it hard to express their feelings.
 They have difficulty forming and maintaining close relationships with others.
 They’re hardworking, but their obsession with perfection can make them inefficient.
 They often feel righteous, indignant, and angry.
 They often face social isolation.
 They can experience anxiety that occurs with depression.
Dependent personality = is a type of anxious personality disorder. People with DPD often feel helpless,
submissive or incapable of taking care of themselves. They may have trouble making simple decisions. But,
with help, someone with a dependent personality can learn self-confidence and self-reliance.
Attitude Towards Examiner
Exhibitionistic = a person who behaves in ways intended to attract attention or display their powers,
personality.
Seductive is an adjective that describes the fascinating magnetic pull that someone or something has, an
attractive quality that tempts you in some way.
Hostile= aggressive. having or showing determination and energetic pursuit of your ends; unfriendly. not
disposed to friendship or friendliness; aggressive, belligerent.
Evasive= answering questions in a way that is not direct or clear, especially because you do not want to
give an honest answer.
Ingratiating =intended or adopted in order to gain Favor, flattering and capable of winning favour,
pleasing.
Motor behaviour
Ticks= Motor tics are movements of the body. Examples of motor tics include blinking, shrugging the
shoulders, or jerking an arm.
Mannerism =is an unusual or peculiar way of performing a normal activity, such as eating, walking, or
talking. Mannerisms often include odd gestures, commonly unique to an individual. These movements are
involuntary and typically last for seconds to minutes, appear multiple times a day, and are associated with
periods of engrossment, excitement, stress, fatigue or boredom. Episodes stop when the person is
distracted. Sometimes they are misdiagnosed as obsessive-compulsive disorders or tics.
Waxy flexibility = is a specific symptom of catatonia. It refers to the patient's body showing resistance to
being moved. Alteration of an individual's posture is similar to bending a warm candle. Waxy flexibility
often develops with other symptoms of catatonia, including: Immobility: showing no signs of motion.
Perseveration = continuation of something (such as an activity or thought) usually to an extreme degree or
beyond a desired point. actions, thoughts, or verbal patterns that are repeated by a person without having
control over the behaviours. Perseverative behaviour is repetitive and continuous.
Volitions
Suggestibility= An inclination to readily and uncritically adopt the ideas, beliefs, attitudes, or actions of
others.
Ambivalence refers to a psychological conflict between opposing evaluations, often experienced as being
torn between alternatives. For example, you may feel ambivalent about going out on Friday night.
Although on one hand it would be fun to hang out with your friends, on the other hand it would be nice to
save money by staying in and resting. The ambivalence is the conflicting feelings about the two desirable
situations.
Passivity phenomena are characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia in which patients report that their
actions or thoughts are influenced by, or under the control of, some external entity.
Automatic obedience is when an individual obeys all orders, commands, and instructions from another
person without question or concern.
‌Echolalia is the repetition or echoing of words or sounds that you hear someone else say.
Echopraxia (which might also be called echokinesis or echomotism) is an involuntary imitation
Negativism is an attitude of mind marked by skepticism especially about nearly everything affirmed by
others.
Formal thought disorder
Derailment= Associative looseness, also known as derailment, refers to a thought-process disorder
characterized by a lack of connection between ideas. Associative looseness often results in vague and
confusing speech, in which the individual will frequently jump from one idea to an unrelated one.
Desultory= If you lack a definite plan or purpose and flit from one thing to another, your actions are
desultory. Some people call such desultory wanderings spontaneous. Others call it "being lost."
Driveling= the patient has a preliminary outline of a complicated thought with all its necessary particulars,
but loses preliminary organization of the thought, so that all the constituent parts get muddled together.
The patient with driveling have a very critical attitude towards their thoughts, but these are not organized
and the inner material relationship between them becomes obscured and change in significance.
Neologism=In psychiatry and neuroscience, the term neologism is used to describe words that have
meaning only to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning.
Word salad, or schizophasia, is a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and
phrases", most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. The term
schizophasia is used in particular to describe the confused language that may be evident in schizophrenia.
Over inclusion= failure of an individual to eliminate ineffective or inappropriate responses associated with
a particular stimulus.
Condensation= the fusion of multiple meanings, concepts, or emotions into one image or symbol.
Condensation is particularly common in dreams, in which, for example, one dream character may fuse the
dreamer’s feelings toward several people, or one dream action may combine different emotional impulses.
Thought Content
Obsessions= People with OCD experience unwanted obsessions which take the form of persistent and
uncontrollable thoughts, although obsessions can sometimes be persistent images, impulses, worries, fears
or doubts or a combination of all these. They’re always intrusive, unwanted, disturbing and most
importantly significantly interfere with the sufferer’s ability to function on a day-to-day basis as they are
incredibly difficult to ignore.
Compulsions= Compulsions or compulsive acts can be defined as repetitious, purposeful physical or
mental actions that the individual feels compelled to engage in according to their own strict rules or in a
stereotyped manner.Typically, the individual experiences a sense of resistance to the act but this is
overridden by the strong, subjective drive to perform the action. Most often the principal aim behind the
compulsive behaviour is to generate relief (usually only temporary) from the anxiety elicited by the
preceding obsession.These behaviours involve repeatedly performing purposeful and meaningful actions in
a very rigid and structured routine, specifically in relation to the obsessional thoughts usually carried out
with a view to prevent perceived danger or harm coming to oneself or to a loved one.
Phobia= A phobia is an uncontrollable, irrational, and lasting fear of a certain object, situation, or activity.
This fear can be so overwhelming that a person may go to great lengths to avoid the source of this fear.
One response can be a panic attack.
Depersonalization = Feelings that you're an outside observer of your thoughts, feelings, your body or parts
of your body — for example, as if you were floating in air above yourself. Feeling like a robot or that you're
not in control of your speech or movements.
Homicidal ideation is a common medical term for thoughts about homicide. There is a range of homicidal
thoughts which spans from vague ideas of revenge to detailed and fully formulated plans without the act
itself.[1] Most people who have homicidal ideation do not commit homicide.Homicidal ideation is not a
disease itself, but may result from other illnesses such as delirium and psychosis
Ideas of Reference= Most people tend to believe other people think more about them than they actually
do, and believing oneself to be more important than reality indicates is common. Ideas of reference are
variations on this behaviour, and occur when a person believes something is referring to them when it is
not. For example, a person shopping in a store might see two strangers laughing and believe that they are
laughing at him or her when in reality the other two people do not even notice the person. Some mental
health professionals believe this thought error is a type of cognitive bias.
Religious Preoccupation= experiencing religious delusions are preoccupied with religious subjects that are
not within the expected beliefs for an individual's background, including culture, education, and known
experiences of religion.
Hypochondriacal ideas= Preoccupation with fears of having, or the idea that one has, a serious disease
based on the person's misinterpretation of bodily symptoms. The preoccupation persists despite
appropriate medical evaluation and reassurance.
Derealization is a mental state where you feel detached from your surroundings. People and objects
around you may seem unreal. Even so, you're aware that this altered state isn't normal.
Delusions
Persecutory delusions= are persistent, troubling, false beliefs that one is about to be harmed or mistreated
by others in some way. These beliefs occur in some people with delusional disorder, a rare mental illness,
and cause significant distress, including anxiety, depression, and fear.
Love delusions= Erotomania occurs when a person develops the delusional belief they are loved from afar
by another person. Delusional love is generally intense, with rejections paradoxically interpreted as covert
declarations of love. There is an association between erotomania and high-risk behaviour, such as stalking.
Delusion of sin and guilt= Self-accusation is when patients are convinced that they are responsible for the
occurrence of any disaster; be it a fire, a flood, or an earthquake, which cannot really be their fault. If not
addressed by treatment, this type of delusion could cause depression.
Delusion of poverty= Person strongly believes they are financially incapacitated. Although this type of
delusion is less common now, False belief about having lost one’s livelihood and that one is poor or that
poverty is inevitable (Hamilton 1976).
Delusion of grandeur is the false belief in one's own superiority, greatness, or intelligence. People
experiencing delusions of grandeur do not just have high self-esteem; instead, they believe in their own
greatness and importance even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Delusion of control = has different names, including delusion of passivity, passivity experience, and
passivity phenomenon. According to the patient's narrative, his thoughts, emotions, perceptions or actions
are under the control of a different agent: either another person, a spirit, a machine, or unknown forces.
Delusion of infidelity (Othello syndrome) of a spouse or partner. The Othello syndrome affects males and,
less often, females. It is characterized by recurrent accusations of infidelity, searches for evidence,
repeated interrogation of the partner, tests of their partner's fidelity, and sometime stalking.
Nihilistic delusions= characterized by the delusional belief of being dead, decomposed or annihilated,
having lost one's own internal organs or even not existing entirely as a human being.
What is mood congruent = By contrast, congruent means "in agreement." In this case, any symptoms,
however extreme, are considered mood-congruent when they in agreement with the person's current
mood. Examples include: Believing you have superpowers when you are going through a manic episode.
Feeling suicidal when your dog dies.
mood-incongruent symptoms, the content of a person's delusions or hallucinations does not match their
mood Examples include: Believing you have superpowers despite going through a major depressive
episode. Laughing when your dog dies.
 Other Perceptual Disturbances
Pseudo hallucination= an involuntary sensory experience vivid enough to be regarded as a hallucination,
but which is recognised by the person experiencing it as being subjective and unreal. By contrast, a "true"
hallucination is perceived as entirely real by the person experiencing it. For example Illusions called
pseudo hallucinations occur at times when feelings of anxiety or fear are projected on external objects, as
when a child perceives threatening faces or monsters in shadows at night or sees goblins in trees.
Micropsia/Macropsia= In a variation of metamorphopsia, patients with migraine may complain that
objects appear too small (micropsia) or too large (macropsia). In teleopsia, objects seem too far away.
People may appear too small in lilliputianism. These symptoms can also be caused by seizures.
Autoscopic= seeing a double of oneself in external space. The image is generally short-lived and hazy,
filmy, and colorless. Also called autoscopic phenomenon.
Reflex hallucination, a stimulus in one sensory field produces a hallucination in another. For example, a
patient felt a pain in her head (somatic hallucination) when she heard other people sneeze (the stimulus)
and was convinced that sneezing caused the pain.
Functional hallucinations are a rare phenomenon, wherein hallucinations are triggered by a stimulus in the
same modality, and co-occur with it.
Difference Between Reflex and Functional Hallucination
Reflex Hallucinations: Stimuli in one sensory modality causing a hallucination in a different sensory
modality- i.e. music causing visual hallucinations. Functional hallucinations: Stimuli in one sensory modality
causing a hallucination in the same sensory modality- i.e. music causing auditory hallucinations.
Extra campine hallucinations (EH), the sense of a presence or fleeting movement in the absence of an
associated visual percept, have been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients but their prevalence,
characteristics, and temporal relationship to visual hallucinations (VH) remain unclear. Seeing somebody
standing behind you is a visual extracampine hallucination experience.