In Mental Health Diagnoses
Word salad may describe a symptom of mental conditions in which a person attempts to communicate an idea, but words and phrases that may appear to be random and unrelated come out in an incoherent sequence instead. Often, the person is unaware that he or she did not make sense. It appears in people with dementia and schizophrenia, as well as after anoxic brain injury.
It may be present as:
- Receptive aphasia
- Schizophasia, a mental condition characterized by incoherent babbling (compulsive or intentional, but nonsensical)
- Logorrhea, a mental condition characterized by excessive talking (incoherent and compulsive)
- Clanging, a speech pattern that follows rhyming and other sound associations rather than meaning.
Read more about this topic: Word Salad
Famous quotes containing the words mental and/or health:
“She, her head back, waited
Barbarous the stalking tide;
Her, nor balked nor sated
But plunged into the wide
Area of mental ire,
Lay at her wandering side.”
—Allen Tate (18991979)
“As they move into sharing parenting, men often are apprentices to women because they are not yet as skilled in child care. Mothers have to be willing to teach fathersboth by stepping in and showing and by stepping back and letting them learn.”
—Nancy Press Hawley. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Womens Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)