psychopathy

/ˌsaɪkəˈpæθi/

Other forms: psychopathies

Someone who suffers from a mental illness that makes them violent without any sense of remorse or empathy has psychopathy. Although it's a common term in criminal justice, psychopathy isn't an official psychiatric diagnosis.

If someone has psychopathy, they're referred to as a psychopath. As common as these terms are, a psychiatrist or psychologist won't diagnose someone with psychopathy — a patient with these symptoms will likely get a diagnosis of "antisocial personality disorder." A common test measuring psychopathy is used to study prison populations and for sentencing violent criminals. Psychopathy comes from the Greek roots psykhe, "mind," and pathos, "suffering."

Definitions of psychopathy

1. noun

   any disease of the mind; the psychological state of someone who has emotional or behavioral problems serious enough to require psychiatric intervention
   synonyms: mental disease, mental illness

   types:

   megalomania

   a psychological state characterized by delusions of grandeur

   insanity

   relatively permanent disorder of the mind

   psychosis

   any severe mental disorder in which contact with reality is lost or highly distorted

   insaneness, lunacy, madness

   obsolete terms for legal insanity

   dementedness, dementia

   mental deterioration of organic or functional origin

   irrationality, unreason

   the state of being irrational; lacking powers of understanding

   derangement, mental unsoundness, unbalance

   a state of mental disturbance and disorientation

   craziness, daftness, flakiness

   informal terms for insanity

   DTs, delirium tremens, jimjams

   acute delirium caused by alcohol poisoning

   paranoia

   a psychological disorder characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur

   dementia praecox, schizophrenia, schizophrenic disorder, schizophrenic psychosis

   any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact

   type of:

   mental condition, mental state, psychological condition, psychological state

   (psychology) a mental condition in which the qualities of a state are relatively constant even though the state itself may be dynamic