decompensation

Decompensation is the functional deterioration of a previously working structure or system. Decompensation may occur due to fatigue, stress, illness, or old age. When a system is "compensated", it is able to function despite stressors or defects. Decompensation describes an inability to compensate for these deficiencies. It is a general term commonly used in medicine to describe a variety of situations.

For example, cardiac decompensation may refer to the failure of the heart to maintain adequate blood circulation, after long-standing (previously compensated) vascular disease (see heart failure).

In psychiatry, decompensation is the inability to maintain defense mechanisms in response to stress, resulting in personality disturbance or psychological imbalance. It can refer to the deterioration of mental health in a patient with previously maintained psychiatric illness, leading to a diminished ability to think and carry on daily activities. This includes loss of memory, both long term and short.^{[citation needed]}

The word "decompensation" can imply that the identity of the individual being treated is so interwoven with the mental illness that it is hard to distinguish the two.^{[citation needed]} For this reason many individuals^[who?] with a mental illness do not like the use of this word to describe an increase in symptomatology. It might be more sensitive^{[weasel words]} to simply state that the person experiences an increase in severity and frequency of symptoms. It becomes a problem for the recovery of the person with the illness when they come to believe that their illness is what they are to other people, especially doctors and care givers, and they feel they have lost their identity.^[1]

1. ^ [1], Mead, S. & Copeland, M.E. (2000). What recovery means to us: consumers' perspectives. Community Mental Health Journal, 36, 315-328

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