In This Section
  • ADHD: (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder): a syndrome of disordered learning and disruptive behavior. Symptoms may include inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and impulsive behavior. Learn more

  • Adjustment disorder: a disorder where the child has trouble adjusting to any number of changes in her environment and is often characterized by depression, anxiety, disruptive behavior, rebellion, and others. Learn more

  • Anxiety disorder: encompassing panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias, generalized anxiety disorder, and others in which anxiety is a primary feature. Also called also anxiety neurosis or anxiety state.

  • Behavior modification: psychotherapy that focuses on observable behaviors rather than underlying psychological processes and applies learning principles to substitute desirable responses and behavior patterns for undesirable ones.

  • Cognitive therapy: psychotherapy especially for depression that emphasizes the substitution of desirable patterns of thinking for maladaptive or faulty ones.

  • Encopresis: involuntary passage of feces; often in conjunction with constipation.

  • Hyperactivity: a state in which a person is constantly active. Learn more

  • Learned behavior: behavior a child learns through his environment as opposed to behavior that is a natural outflow of the human organism.

  • Neurosis: a mental disorder affecting only part of the personality and accompanied by various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances.

  • Phobia: an exaggerated, often disabling fear usually unclear to the subject and often having an illogical or symbolic object, class of objects, or situation as its foundation.

  • Psychosomatic: relating to a symptom or series of symptoms that have no biological base.