Physical Therapist Assistant: Diseases and Disorders

Disease characterized by impaired control over the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Lack of desire to eat, or refusal to eat, especially the pathological condition of anorexia nervosa, most often found in adolescent girls and young women.

Autism, a condition of neurodevelopment, is more common in males, with onset typically in infancy. It is diagnosed when a child or adult has abnormalities in a ‘triad’ of behavioral domains: social development, communication, and repetitive behavior / obsessive interests.

Any of several psychological disorders of mood characterized usually by alternating episodes of depression and mania — called also manic depression, manic-depressive illness.

Disorder best defined as a collection of psychological symptoms including sadness; unhappy thoughts characterized by worry, poor self-image, self-blame, guilt and low self-confidence; downbeat views on the future; and a feeling of hopelessness.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) has been one of the most controversial diagnostic categories in the history of psychiatry.

Obsessive compulsive disorder is defined in the DSM-IV as the presence of either obsessions or compulsions (or both). Obsessions are defined as recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses or images that are experienced as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress.

(PTSD), mental disorder that follows an occurrence of extreme psychological stress, such as that encountered in war or resulting from violence, childhood abuse, sexual abuse, or serious accident.

Group of severe mental disorders characterized by reality distortions resulting in unusual thought patterns and behaviors.

AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a chronic, life-threatening disease that is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Common manifestation of dementia , thought to afflict 1 in 20 people over 65.

Condition in which the concentration of hemoglobin in the circulating blood is below normal.

General term for a condition characterized by thickening, hardening, and loss of elasticity of the walls of the blood vessels.

Chronic condition characterized by difficulty in breathing due to spasm of the bronchi (air passages) in the lungs.

Group of diseases characterized by abnormal proliferation of cells.

Degeneration of tissue in an organ resulting in fibrosis, with nodule and scar formation.

Diabetes mellitus, often referred to simply as diabetes, is not a single disease but a group of metabolic disorders characterized by hyperglycemia (elevated blood glucose) resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. It is a major public health problem in the United States, affecting 24.1 million individuals, of whom an

Any of several abnormalities of the heart and its function in maintaining blood circulation.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the central nervous system characterized by recurring episodes of neurological disturbance.

Condition resulting from excessive storage of fat in the body.

A disease, most commonly of post-menopausal women, in which the bones become porous, brittle and liable to fracture, owing to the loss of calcium from the bone substance.

A form of arthritis, particularly common in women, that causes pain, swelling, stiffness and deformity of the joints, especially of the fingers, wrists, ankles, feet or hips.