Psychoprophylaxis
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A method of preparing women for natural childbirth by means of special breathing, relaxation techniques and psychological conditioning, practiced without anaesthetics. uncountable
"The growing emphasis on the emotional aspects of the physical bearing of children has greatly changed the practice of obstetrics across the world — from psychoprophylaxis in Russia to natural childbirth in America."
- 2 The prevention of disease by psychological means. obsolete, rare, uncountable
"The essence of psychoprophylaxis, as of psychotherapy and education, was to associate useful activities with agreeable feeling tones, and to disassociate from useless or injurious acts the agreeable feeling tones they might have acquired."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The growing emphasis on the emotional aspects of the physical bearing of children has greatly changed the practice of obstetrics across the world — from psychoprophylaxis in Russia to natural childbirth in America."
Etymology
From psycho- + prophylaxis.
More for "psychoprophylaxis"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.