Anxiety Attack Overview, Symptoms, Causes, and Warning Signs
An anxiety attack can feel sudden, intense, and physically alarming. People often use the phrase to describe a wave of fear, dread, or nervous-system...
Antisocial Personality Disorder Overview: Signs, Risks, and Complications
Antisocial personality disorder is a serious mental health condition involving a long-term pattern of violating other people’s rights, disregarding social rules, acting impulsively or...
Anosognosia Symptoms, Causes, Risk Factors, and Diagnostic Context
Anosognosia is a lack of awareness of an illness, disability, or change in functioning that is clear to other people. It is most often...
Anorexia Nervosa Signs and Symptoms: What the Condition Can Look Like
Anorexia nervosa is a serious eating disorder in which food restriction, fear of weight gain, and disturbance in body image or self-evaluation can become...
Anorexia athletica Overview: Warning Signs, Risk Factors, and Effects
Anorexia athletica describes a harmful pattern in which exercise, training, weight control, and food restriction become rigid, compulsive, or medically unsafe. It is most...
Anhedonia Causes, Risk Factors, Diagnosis Context, and Complications
Anhedonia is a loss or marked reduction in the ability to feel interest, pleasure, enjoyment, or satisfaction from experiences that would usually feel rewarding....
Anankastic Personality Disorder Symptoms, Signs, and Diagnostic Context
Anankastic personality disorder describes a long-standing pattern of rigid perfectionism, excessive control, strict rule-following, and difficulty adapting when things do not meet exact standards....
Anancastic neurosis Symptoms, Signs, Risk Factors, and Effects
Anancastic neurosis is an older term most closely aligned with what modern psychiatry usually calls obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. The spelling “anancastic” is also...
Amnestic Disorder Explained: Memory Loss, Causes, Effects, and Risks
Amnestic disorder is a neurocognitive condition in which memory impairment is the main problem, rather than one symptom among many. A person may be...
Amnestic Confabulatory Syndrome Causes, Brain Changes, and Warning Signs
Amnestic confabulatory syndrome is a serious disturbance of memory in which a person has major difficulty forming or retrieving memories and may fill memory...
Amnesia Symptoms, Causes, Risk Factors, and Diagnostic Clues
Amnesia is a meaningful loss of memory, not ordinary forgetfulness. It can involve difficulty forming new memories, trouble retrieving past experiences, or both. Some...
Alzheimer’s Disease Overview: Early Signs, Causes, and Risks
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disease that gradually damages memory, thinking, behavior, and the ability to manage daily life. It is the most...
Akathisia Symptoms, Signs, Causes, Risk Factors, and Complications
Akathisia is a distressing movement-related condition in which a person feels driven to move and finds it difficult, sometimes nearly impossible, to remain still....
Affective psychosis Symptoms and Signs During Severe Mood Episodes
Affective psychosis is a form of psychosis that occurs together with a major disturbance in mood, such as severe depression, mania, or a mixed...
Aesthetic syndrome Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis Context, and Complications
Aesthetic syndrome is most often used to describe a rare, debated clinical phenomenon better known as Stendhal syndrome or Florence syndrome. It refers to...
Adolescent-Onset Schizophrenia Symptoms, Signs, Causes, and Risk Factors
Adolescent-onset schizophrenia is a serious psychiatric condition in which psychotic symptoms begin during the teenage years, before adulthood. It is uncommon, but when it...