Da Costa's Syndrome - Neurocirculatory asthenia; "soldier's heart"; a functional disorder of the circulatory system that is usually a part of an anxiety state or secondary to hyperventilation.

Dalmane - A depressant drug of the benzodiazepine family used to induce sleep.

Damages - Money awarded by a court to a person injured by the unlawful actor negligence of another person.

Dark Adaptation - The gradual improvement of the eyes' sensitivity after a shift in illumination from light to near darkness.

Darvon - An analgesic soup containing propoxyphene.

Date rape - Unwanted sexual violation by a social acquaintance in the context of a consensual dating situation.

Daytime Sleepiness - The experience of excessive sleepiness during daytime activities; the major complaint of patients evaluated at sleep disorder centers.

De Facto - Latin, meaning "in fact" or "actually." Something that exists in fact but not as a matter of law.

De Jure - Latin, meaning "in law." Something that exists by operation of law.

De Novo - Latin, meaning "anew." A trial de novo is a completely new trial. Appellate review de novo implies no deference to the trial judge's ruling.

Debriefing - A procedure conducted at the end of an experiment in which the researcher provides the participant with as much information about the study as possible and makes sure that no participant leaves feeling confused, upset, or embarrassed.

Debtor - One who owes a debt to another; a person filing for relief under theBankruptcy Code.

Debtor's Plan - A debtor's detailed description of how the debtor proposes to pay creditors' claims over a fixed period of time.

Decision - The verdict of a court in a case

Decision Aversion - The tendency to avoid decision making; the tougher the decision, the greater the likelihood of decision aversion.

Decision Making - The process of choosing between alternatives; selecting or rejecting available options.

Declarative Memory - Memory for information such as facts and events.

Declaratory Judgment - A statutory remedy for judicial determination of a controversy where the plaintiff is in doubt about his legal rights.

Decompensation - The deterioration of existing defenses, leading to an exacerbation of pathological behavior.

Decondition - The unlearning of classically conditioned responses. Helping addicts identify and neutralize the cues or triggers they developed while they were addicted.

Decree - An order of the court. A final decree is one that fully and finally disposes of the litigation.

Deduction Notice - An administrative notice directing a financial institution to deduct an amount from an obligor's funds on account to pay a support obligation.

Deductive Reasoning - A form of thinking in which one draws a conclusion that is intended to follow logically from two or more statements or premises.

Deed - A written legal document describing a piece of property and setting out the boundaries of that property

Defamation - That which tends to injure a person's reputation.

Default - The failure to do something required of you under contract – an obligation. Ordinarily the obligation is to pay money, which is you do not pay, would mean you are in default of the contract

Default Judgment - A judgment entered against a party who fails to appear in court or respond to the charges.

Defendant - The person defending or denying in a lawsuit or other legal proceeding.

Defense Mechanism - Automatic psychological process that protects the individual against anxiety and from awareness of internal or external stressors or dangers.

Defense of Property - Affirmative defense in criminal law or tort law where force was used to protect one's property.

Deficient - Incomplete; defective; not sufficient in quantity or force.

Defined Benefit/Contribution Plan - Essentially both a defined benefit plan and a defined contribution plan are forms of 401(k) retirement plans

Defunct - A corporation no longer operative; having ceased to exist.

Déjà Vu - A paramnesia consisting of the sensation or illusion that one is seeing what one has seen before

Deliberation - The jury's decision-making process after hearing the evidence and closing arguments and being given the court's instructions.

Delinquency - The commission of an illegal act by a juvenile.

Delinquent Child - A child who: (1) violates any law that would be a crime if committed by an adult, except traffic laws, (2) violates any lawful order of the court, (3) shows or gives false information or identification to gain entrance to an adult entertainment establishment, (4) purchases or attempts to purchase a firearm, (5) purchases, receives, or acquires a pseudoephedrine product that is not pursuant to a prescription or gives false identification information to acquire a pseudoephedrine product, (6) is an habitual truant and previously has been adjudicated an unruly child for being an habitual truant, or (7) is a chronic truant.

Delirium - An acute organic brain syndrome secondary to physical causes in which consciousness is affected and disorientation results often associated with illusions, visual hallucinations and persecutory ideation.

Delusion - A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.

Delusion of Reference - A delusion whose theme is that events, objects, or other persons in one's immediate environment have a particular and unusual significance. These delusions are usually of a negative or pejorative nature, but also may be grandiose in content. This differs from an idea of reference, in which the false belief is not as firmly held nor as fully organized into a true belief.

Delusional Jealousy - The delusion that one's sexual partner is unfaithful. erotomanic A delusion that another person, usually of higher status, is in love with the individual.

Delusional Mood - Also known as wahnstimmung, a feeling that something unusual is about to happen of special significance for that person.

Delusional Perception - A normal perception which has become highly invested with significance and which has become incorporated into a delusional system, e.g. 'when I saw the traffic lights turn red I knew that the dog I was walking was a Nazi and a lesbian Nazi at that'.

Delusions - False or irrational beliefs maintained despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Demand Characteristics - Cues in an experimental setting that influence the participants' perception of what is expected of them and that systematically influence their behavior within that setting.

Dementia - An chronic organic mental illness which produces a global deterioration in cognitive abilities and which usually runs a deteriorating course.

Demerol - Brand name for Meperidine, a synthetic opiate similar to morphine but only about as potent as codeine.

Demurrer - A pleading filed by the defendant that the complaint as filed is not sufficient to require an answer.

Dendrites - The branches that reach out from a neuron's cell body to receive messages from the axon terminals of other neurons.

Denial - A defense mechanism where certain information is not accessed by the conscious mind.

Dentate Gyrus - A key part of the hippocampus that contains one of the highest concentrations of cannabinoid receptors in the brain.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid - (DNA) The chemical compound that makes up genes.

Dependent - One who derives existence and support from another.

Dependent Child - A child to whom any of the following factors that place the child at risk applies: is homeless or destitute or without adequate parental care through no fault of the parents; lacks adequate parental care due to the mental or physical condition of the parents; is in such a condition or environment as to warrant the state assuming the child's guardianship; or is residing in a household in which a household member committed an act that was the basis for an adjudication that a child who resides in the household is an abused, neglected, or dependent child.

Dependent Variable - In an experimental setting, any variable whose values are the results of changes in one or more independent variables.

Depersonalisation - An experience where the self is felt to be unreal, detached from reality or different in some way. Depersonalisation can be triggered by tiredness, dissociative episodes or partial epileptic seizures.

Deposition - Testimony of a witness or a party taken under oath outside the courtroom, the transcript of which becomes a part of the court's file.

Depressants - Drugs that relieve anxiety and produce sleep. Depressants include barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and alcohol.

Depression - An affective disorder characterised by a profound and persistent sadness.

Derailment - A pattern of speech in which a person's ideas slip off one track onto another that is completely unrelated or only obliquely related.

Derealization - An alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems strange or unreal (e.g., people may seem unfamiliar or mechanical).

Dereistic  - Mental activity that is not in accordance with reality, logic, or experience.

Descriptive Statistics - Statistical procedures that are used to summarize sets of scores with respect to central tendencies, variability, and correlations.

Detachment - A behavior pattern characterized by general aloofness in interpersonal contact; may include intellectualization, denial, and superficiality.

Detention - The temporary care of children pending court adjudication or disposition, or execution of a court order, in a public or private facility that is designed to physically restrict the movement and activities of children.

Detention Facility - Any place that is used for the confinement of a child who is alleged or found to be a delinquent child or unruly child in any state or under federal law.

Determinism - The doctrine that all events-physical, behavioral, and mental-are determined by specific causal factors that are potentially knowable.

Detoxification - The process of removing a drug from the body. This is the initial period addicts must go through to become drug-free. Withdrawal symptoms appear early during this process. Depending on the drug, detoxification lasts for a few days to a week or more.

Developmental Age - The chronological age at which most children show a particular level of physical or mental development.

Developmental Center - One of the ten state-funded institutions managed by the Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities and serving about 1,600 persons with mental retardation by providing residential care, treatment, and training.

Developmental Psychology - The branch of psychology concerned with interaction between physical and psychological processes and with stages of growth from conception throughout the entire life span.

Dextromoramide - A very potent synthetic opiate.

Diathesis-Stress Hypothesis - A hypothesis about the cause of certain disorders, such as schizophrenia, that suggests that genetic factors predispose an individual to a certain disorder, but that environmental stress factors must impinge in order for the potential risk to manifest itself.

Dichotic Listening - An experimental technique in which a different auditory stimulus is simultaneously presented to each ear.

Difference Threshold - The smallest physical difference between two stimuli that can still be recognized as a difference; operationally defined as the point at which the stimuli are recognized as different half of the time.

Diffusion of Responsibility - In emergency situations, the larger the number of bystanders, the less responsibility any one bystander feels to help.

Digest - An index or compilation of abstracts of reported cases into one, set forth under proper law topic headings or titles and usually in alphabetical arrangement.

Dihydrocodeine - A semi-synthetic opiate similar to codeine.

Dihydromorphinone - Dilaudid.

Dilaudid - A semi-synthetic opiate, about three times as potent as heroin.

Diphenoxylate - A mild semi-synthetic opiate used as a anti-diarrhetic.

Diplopia - Double vision due to paralysis of the ocular muscles; seen in inhalant intoxication and other conditions affecting the oculomotor nerve.

Direct Evidence - Proof of facts by witnesses who saw acts done or heard words spoken.

Direct Examination - The first questioning of witnesses by the party on whose behalf they are called.

Direct Practice - A domain of social work, in which practitioners interact personally with clients, typically face-to face using a range of professional skills and methods, to help them achieve their desired goals.

Directed Verdict - In a case in which the plaintiff has failed to present on the facts of his case proper evidence for jury consideration, the trial judge may order the entry of a verdict without allowing the jury to consider it.

Disability Financial Assistance Program - a program that provides limited financial assistance to persons who are unemployable due to physical or mental impairment.

Disbarment - Form of discipline of a lawyer resulting in the loss (often permanently) of that lawyer's right to practice law.

Discharge - A release of a debtor from personal liability for certain dischargeable debts. Notable exceptions to dischargeability are taxes and student loans. A discharge releases a debtor from personal liability for certain debts known as dischargeable debts and prevents the creditors owed those debts from taking any action against the debtor or the debtor's property to collect the debts. The discharge also prohibits creditors from communicating with the debtor regarding the debt, including through telephone calls, letters, and personal contact.

Discharge - The name given to the bankruptcy court's formal discharge of a debtor's debts. In probate, the release of the estate's representative from fiduciary responsibility.

Dischargeable Debt - A debt for which the Bankruptcy Code allows the debtor's personal liability to be eliminated.

Disclaim - To refuse a gift made in a will.

Disclosure Statement - A written document prepared by the chapter 11 debtor or other plan proponent that is designed to provide "adequate information" to creditors to enable them to evaluate the chapter 11 plan of reorganization.

Disconnection Syndrome - Term coined by Norman Geschwind (1926¾1984) to describe the interruption of information transferred from one brain region to another.

Discovery - Procedures used to obtain disclosure of evidence before trial.

Discretionary Serious Youthful Offender - A person who is eligible for a discretionary SYO sentence and who is not transferred to adult court under a mandatory or discretionary transfer.

Discretionary SYO - A case in which the juvenile court, in the juvenile court's discretion, may impose a serious youthful offender disposition.

Discriminative Stimuli - Stimuli that act as predictors of reinforcement, signaling when particular behaviors will result in positive reinforcement.

Disinhibition  - Freedom to act according to one's inner drives or feelings, with less regard for restraints imposed by cultural norms or one's superego; removal of an inhibitory, constraining, or limiting influence, as in the escape from higher cortical control in neurologic injury, or in uncontrolled firing of impulses, as when a drug interferes with the usual limiting or inhibiting action of GABA within the central nervous system.

Dismissal - The termination of a lawsuit.

Dismissal with Prejudice - Court action that prevents an identical lawsuit from being filed later.

Dismissal without Prejudice - Court action that allows the later filing.

Disorientation - Confusion about the time of day, date, or season (time), where one is (place), or who one is (person).

Displacement - A defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, in which emotions, ideas, or wishes are transferred from their original object to a more acceptable substitute; often used to allay anxiety.

Disposable Income - Income not reasonably necessary for the maintenance or support of the debtor or dependents. If the debtor operates a business, disposable income is defined as those amounts over and above what is necessary for the payment of ordinary operating expenses.

Disposition - The order of a juvenile court determining what is to be done with a minor already adjudged to be within the court's jurisdiction. In criminal cases, the settlement of a case.

Dispositional Variables - The organismic variables, or inner determinants of behavior, that occur within human and nonhuman animals.

Disregards - Types or amounts of income that are not counted when determining an individual's eligibility for a welfare program

Dissent - To disagree. An appellate court opinion setting forth the minority view and outlining the disagreement of one or more judges with the decision of the majority.

Dissociation  - A disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment. The disturbance may be sudden or gradual, transient or chronic.

Dissociative Amnesia - The inability to remember important personal experiences, caused by psychological factors in the absence of any organic dysfunction.

Dissociative Disorder - A personality disorder marked by a disturbance in the integration of identity, memory, or consciousness.

Dissociative Identity Disorder - (DID) A dissociative mental disorder in which two or more distinct personalities exist within the same individual; formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

Dissolution - The termination; process of dissolving or winding up something.

Distal Stimulus - In the processes of perception, the physical object in the world, as contrasted with the proximal stimulus, the optical image on the retina.

Distractibility - The inability to maintain attention, that is, the shifting from one area or topic to another with minimal provocation, or attention being drawn too frequently to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli.

Divergent Thinking - An aspect of creativity characterized by an ability to produce unusual but appropriate responses to problems.

Diversion - The process of removing some minor criminal, traffic, or juvenile cases from the full judicial process, on the condition that the accused undergo some sort of rehabilitation or make restitution for damages.

Diversity - Respecting and safeguarding the individuality of all people resulting from differences in factors such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic level, age, gender, disability, among others.

Diversity of Citizenship - The condition when the party on one side of a lawsuit is a citizen of one state and the other party is a citizen of another state; such cases are under the jurisdiction of federal courts.

DMA - A hallucinogenic "designer drug" with psychedelic properties.

DNA - (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) The physical basis for the transmission of genetic information.

Docket - A log containing the complete history of each case in the form of brief chronological entries summarizing the court proceedings.

Docket Control - A system for keeping track of deadlines and court dates for both litigation and non-litigation matters.

Domicile - The place where a person has his permanent home to which he intends to return.

Dopamine - The neurotransmitter that produces feelings of pleasure when released by the brain reward system.

Dopamine Transporter - A structure that straddles the cell membranes of axon terminals of dopamine-releasing neurons and rapidly removes dopamine from the synapse.

Double Bind - Interaction in which one person demands a response to a message containing mutually contradictory signals, while the other person is unable either to comment on the incongruity or to escape from the situation.

Double Jeopardy - Putting a person on trial more than once for the same crime.

Double-Blind Control - An experimental technique in which biased expectations of experimenters are eliminated by keeping both participants and experimental assistants unaware of which participants have received which treatment.

Double-Blind Trials - Studies of an experimental drug in which neither patient nor doctor knows whether the patient is receiving the experimental drug or some alternative.

Dream Analysis - The psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams used to gain insight into a person's unconscious motives or conflicts.

Dream Work - In Freudian dream analysis, the process by which the internal censor transforms the latent content of a dream into manifest content.

Drive - Basic urge, instinct, motivation; a term used to avoid confusion with the more purely biological concept of instinct.

Dronabinol - The generic name of synthetic THC.

Drug Abuse - Using illegal drugs; using legal drugs inappropriately. The repeated, high-dose, self-administration of drugs to produce pleasure, to alleviate stress, or to alter or avoid reality (or all three).

Drug Treatment - A combination of detoxification, psychosocial therapy and, if required, skill acquisition to help people recover from addiction.

Drug-Free Treatment - An approach to helping addicts recover from addiction without the use of medication.

Due process - In criminal law, the constitutional guarantee that a defendant will receive a fair and impartial trial. In civil law, the legal rights of someone who confronts an adverse action threatening liberty or property.

Due Process of Law - The right of all persons to receive the guarantees and safeguards of the law and the judicial process. It includes such constitutional requirements as adequate notice, assistance of counsel, and the rights to remain silent, to a speedy and public trial, to an impartial jury, and to confront and secure witnesses.

Dyad - A two-person relationship, such as the therapeutic relationship between doctor and patient in individual psychotherapy.

Dynorphins - Peptides with opiate-like effects that are made by neurons and used as neurotransmitters; one of the endogenous opiods that binds to opiate receptors.

Dysarthria - Imperfect articulation of speech due to disturbances of muscular control or incoordination.

Dysgeusia  - Perversion of the sense of taste.

Dyskinesia - Abnormal movements as in tardive dyskinesia a late onset onet of abnormal involuntary movements. Tardive dyskinesia is conventionally thought a late side effect of first generation antipsychotics, but some abnormal movements were seen in schizophrenia before the introduction of antipsychotics.

Dyskinesia - Distortion of voluntary movements with involuntary muscular activity.

Dyslexia - Inability or difficulty in reading, including word-blindness and a tendency to reverse letters and words in reading and writing.

Dysphoria - A withdrawal symptom that distinguished by feelings of uneasiness and malaise.

Dysphoric Mood - An unpleasant mood, such as sadness, anxiety, or irritability.

Dyspraxia - A dyspraxia is a difficulty with a previously learnt or acquired movement or skill. An example might be a dressing dyspraxia or a constructional dyspraxia. Dyspraxias tend to indicate cortical damage, particularly in the parietal lobe region.

Dyssomnia - Primary disorders of sleep or wakefulness characterized by insomnia or hypersomnia as the major presenting symptom. Dyssomnias are disorders of the amount, quality, or timing of sleep.

Dystonia  - Disordered tonicity of muscles.