Psychomotor Activity
Fancy way of saying level and kind of activity as a reflection of your psychological state.
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Free Association
A technique used in psychoanalysis allowing a patient to talk without any direction or input to analyze current issues of the client.
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prn
Commonly used medical shorthand meaning "as needed."
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Affect
A pattern of observable behaviors that is the expression of a person's subjectively experienced emotion, such as anger, sadness, elation. This is in contrast to mood, which is more pervasive. Think of mood as a person's 'climate' and affect as his/her current 'weather.' Example: "Dick C.'s mood is generally negative and his affect in the last three sessions was also negative."
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Mental Status Exam
A common evaluation tool used to assess impaired cognitive abilities, altered capacity for memory, disordered thought processes, and otherwise abnormal mental status. Example: "After Arnold S. could not tell the difference between his fundraising and Gray Davis' fundraising, the therapist concluded Arnold's thought process is clearly disordered, and he needs further evaluation and certainly on-going treatment."
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Negative Correlation
In statistics, a correlation is a measure of the strength of the relationship between two things. A negative or inverse correlation means as one things gets bigger/more, the other gets smaller/less. (It does not prove, necessarily, that one causes the other, only that there is a relationship between the two.)
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Tarasoff
In 1974 the California Supreme Court established the principle that requires physicians and psychotherapists to warn intended victims of dangerous patients. This is known as the Tarasoff decision. It brought to widespread attention the legal principle known as the "duty to warn."
Key provisions of the duty to warn were elaborated in a 1976 court decision containing the following statement:
When a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should determine, that his patient presents a serious danger of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger. The discharge of this duty may require the therapist to take one or more of various steps, depending upon the nature of the case. Thus, it may call for him to warn the intended victim of the danger, to notify the policy, or to take whatever other steps are reasonably necessary under the circumstances.
