# Glossary: the recurring clinical words

Terms that appear again and again across the atlas, each in one plain sentence. The English term is kept because it is what you will hear in hospitals, referral letters and exams; the Nepali column gives the meaning, not a coined translation.

## A to W

| Term | Plain meaning | Where it lives |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Anhedonia | Losing the ability to enjoy things that used to give pleasure | [Depressive disorders](https://manoatlas.com/depression.md) |
| Avolition | Loss of drive to start or finish everyday tasks | [Psychosis](https://manoatlas.com/psychosis.md) |
| Behavioural activation | Treating low mood by scheduling small activities first and letting the mood follow, rather than waiting to feel like it | [Techniques step by step](https://manoatlas.com/techniques.md) |
| Biopsychosocial | Illness understood as biology, mind and social world acting together | [Mental health basics](https://manoatlas.com/basics.md) |
| Cognitive defusion | Stepping back from a thought so it is seen as words in the mind, not a fact to obey ("I am having the thought that…") | [Techniques step by step](https://manoatlas.com/techniques.md) |
| Cognitive distortion | A habitual, unfair way of thinking, such as catastrophising | [Mental health basics](https://manoatlas.com/basics.md) |
| Compulsion | A repeated act or ritual done to relieve an obsession | [OCD & related](https://manoatlas.com/ocd.md) |
| Conditions of worth | Rules learned early about when one deserves love ("only if I come first"); Rogers' term for what blocks growth | [Approaches & forms](https://manoatlas.com/approaches.md) |
| Conversion | Real body symptoms (fits, paralysis) without a matching disease | [Conversion & somatic](https://manoatlas.com/somatic.md) |
| Delusion | A fixed false belief that evidence cannot shift | [Psychosis](https://manoatlas.com/psychosis.md) |
| Depersonalisation | Feeling detached from one's own body or self, as if watching oneself | [Anxiety disorders](https://manoatlas.com/anxiety.md) |
| Derealisation | The world around feels unreal, foggy or dream-like | [Anxiety disorders](https://manoatlas.com/anxiety.md) |
| Diathesis-stress | A built-in vulnerability that becomes illness when stress hits | [Mental health basics](https://manoatlas.com/basics.md) |
| Dissociation | Mind and body disconnecting under stress: blanking out, losing time | [Trauma & stressor](https://manoatlas.com/trauma.md) |
| Exposure | Facing a feared thing in small planned steps until fear fades | [Fear: the foundation](https://manoatlas.com/foundation.md) |
| Formulation (4-P) | Predisposing, precipitating, perpetuating and protective factors turned into a plan | [The counselling process](https://manoatlas.com/process.md) |
| Grounding | Simple senses-and-breath techniques that calm the body in minutes | [Tools & techniques](https://manoatlas.com/tools.md) |
| Hallucination | Hearing, seeing or feeling something that is not there | [Psychosis](https://manoatlas.com/psychosis.md) |
| Hyperarousal | The body stuck on high alert: jumpy, sleepless, irritable | [Trauma & stressor](https://manoatlas.com/trauma.md) |
| Hypomania | A milder, shorter high mood with less sleep and more energy (bipolar II) | [The rest of the map](https://manoatlas.com/more.md) |
| Obsession | An unwanted thought or image that keeps intruding | [OCD & related](https://manoatlas.com/ocd.md) |
| Paralanguage | Everything in the voice except the words: tone, pace, volume, pauses | [Communication skills](https://manoatlas.com/skills.md) |
| Peripartum | During pregnancy or in the weeks after birth | [Depressive disorders](https://manoatlas.com/depression.md) |
| Post-ictal | The confused, drowsy state after an epileptic seizure | [Conversion & somatic](https://manoatlas.com/somatic.md) |
| Proxemics | How people use distance and seating; in counselling, sitting at an angle with no desk between | [Communication skills](https://manoatlas.com/skills.md) |
| Psychoeducation | Explaining a condition to a person and family in plain words | [Anxiety disorders](https://manoatlas.com/anxiety.md) |
| Psychosis | A break with shared reality: delusions, hallucinations, disorganisation | [Psychosis](https://manoatlas.com/psychosis.md) |
| Reinforcement | Anything that makes a behaviour more likely to happen again | [Fear: the foundation](https://manoatlas.com/foundation.md) |
| Response prevention | In OCD work, staying with the trigger without doing the ritual, so the person tests the fear's prediction and learns to carry the not-knowing | [Techniques step by step](https://manoatlas.com/techniques.md) |
| Safety plan | A written list: warning signs, coping steps, people to call, making home safer | [Suicide: assessment](https://manoatlas.com/suicide.md) |
| Screening | A short questionnaire that suggests a problem; it never diagnoses | [Tools & techniques](https://manoatlas.com/tools.md) |
| Somatisation | Distress expressed through the body: aches, weakness, dizziness | [Conversion & somatic](https://manoatlas.com/somatic.md) |
| Task-sharing | Trained non-specialists delivering care that specialists cannot reach | [Wellbeing & intervention](https://manoatlas.com/wellbeing.md) |
| Therapeutic alliance | The working bond of trust and shared purpose between counselor and client; the strongest single predictor of whether counselling helps | [The counselling process](https://manoatlas.com/process.md) |
| Tolerance | Needing more of a substance for the same effect | [Substance use](https://manoatlas.com/substance.md) |
| Vasovagal | A faint caused by a sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure | [Anxiety disorders](https://manoatlas.com/anxiety.md) |
| Withdrawal | The body's reaction when a substance it depends on is stopped | [Substance use](https://manoatlas.com/substance.md) |


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*Source: https://manoatlas.com/glossary · Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Mano Atlas is an educational resource, not a diagnostic tool.*