Denial (Psychology)

Denial, as a term in psychology, names a defense mechanism in which a person faced with a fact too uncomfortable to accept rejects it outright, insisting it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence, and denialism more broadly names a person's choice to deny reality as a way of avoiding a psychologically uncomfortable truth. The concept is central to twelve-step programs, where abandoning the denial that a substance dependence is problematic forms the basis of several of the program's own steps. People facing symptoms of a serious medical condition sometimes deny or ignore those symptoms because the possibility of a serious health problem is too uncomfortable to confront, and the American Heart Association cites denial as a principal reason that treatment for a heart attack is delayed.