Medical Terminology (medical + terminology)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Experiencing psychiatric diagnosis: client perspectives on being named mentally ill,

JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 6 2003
Y. M. HAYNE rn phd
In this article is reported result of a phenomenological study whereby privileged view was gained into the lives of persons who had experienced receiving a diagnosis which named ,severe and enduring mental illness'. Thematic analysis yielded the four essential themes of diagnosis as the experience of ,a knowledge that knows', ,destructive (gift) of difference', ,making visible the invisible' and ,making knowledge knowledgeable'. Each of the themes is discussed under its own heading in this paper as a means for describing the nature of ,experiencing psychiatric diagnosis'. Effort is made to provide glimpse into the ,lifeworld' of being diagnosed mentally ill, and the reader's attention is directed to a particular kind of power that exists in the medical language of diagnoses. Discernment is highlighted as most consequential to an ,action sensitive practice' and a case is made for care-providers in psychiatric-mental health care to be sensitized to how medical terminology is experienced and the need to strive for balance within the ,economy of power' contained in these specialized words. [source]


Medicalizing melancholia: Exploring profiles of psychiatric professionalization

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2006
Judith Misbach
The nineteenth century was the site of radical changes in understanding mental illness. The professionalization of psychiatry consisted primarily of the discipline's aspiration to the status of an expert medical subspecialty. While all forms of insanity were eventually reframed in medical terms, melancholia,for moral and nosological reasons,assumed a special role that made it an ideal diagnosis for conceptual reframing. Our analysis of the journal literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in North America and Germany traces several ways in which melancholia was medicalized. As the care for the insane shifted into the professional realm of physicians and medical terminology came to replace prior descriptors of mental illness, melancholia was replaced by depression. In addition, the process of delineating affective pathology assumed a distinctly medical flavor. Finally, melancholia was firmly medicalized when its boundaries blurred with neurasthenia. Differences in how ordinary affective terms became medicalized in German and North American psychiatry illustrate the importance of local historical approaches. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Definition of restless legs syndrome, how to diagnose it, and how to differentiate it from RLS mimics

MOVEMENT DISORDERS, Issue S18 2007
Heike Benes MD
Abstract Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a clinical diagnosis based primarily on self-reports of individuals. The International RLS Study Group has published diagnostic criteria that are essential for an operational diagnosis of RLS; further clinical features are considered by the group supportive for or associated with RLS. However, sensitivity and specificity are not perfect and "mimics" of RLS have been reported, i.e., other conditions like nocturnal cramps sometimes can appear to fulfill the essential diagnostic criteria indicating the need for more thorough understanding of the diagnostic criteria and better differential diagnoses. To contribute to the accuracy of diagnostic processes in RLS, we recapitulate the definition of RLS as an urge to move focused on the legs (and arms in some patients). This urge to move often but not always occurs together with dysesthesia, i.e. unpleasant abnormal sensations appearing without any apparent sensory stimulation. The urge to move and any accompanying dysesthesia must be engendered by rest, relieved by movement and worse in the evening or night. Succinctly, RLS can be summarized in medical terminology as a "movement-responsive quiescegenic nocturnal focal akathisia usually with dysesthesias." Empirical approaches to investigate the independence of the essential criteria "worsening at night" and "worsening at rest" are reported. Possible differential diagnoses of RLS are discussed under the perspective of the NIH diagnostic criteria of RLS. Standardized methods to assess a RLS diagnosis are presented which might improve differential diagnosis and in general the reliability and validity of RLS diagnosis. © 2007 Movement Disorder Society [source]


Use of common Chinese herbs in the treatment of psoriasis

CLINICAL & EXPERIMENTAL DERMATOLOGY, Issue 5 2003
T. W. Tse
Summary Chinese herbal medicines have been shown to be effective in the treatment of atopic eczema. However, the Western scientific/medical literature has not fully examined the potential usefulness of herbal treatments in the management of psoriasis. This article aims to provide an Eastern insight into psoriasis, considering the diagnosis of psoriasis using Chinese medical terminology and its treatment using herbal medicine, as well as how these herbs might work. [source]