Healthy People 2010—Conference Edition

Chapter 18 Mental Health and Mental Disorders

Terminology

(A listing of all abbreviations and acronyms used in this publication appears in Appendix K.)

Anxiety Disorders: Anxiety disorders have multiple physical and psychological symptoms, but all have in common feelings of apprehension, tension, or uneasiness. Among the anxiety disorders are panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Case management: Practice in which the service recipient is a partner in his or her recovery and self-management of mental illness and life.

Co-occurring/comorbidity: In general, the existence of two or more illnesses—whether physical or mental—at the same time in a single individual. In this chapter, comorbidity specifically means the existence of a mental illness and a substance abuse disorder or a mental and a physical illness in the same person at the same time.

Consumer: Any person using mental health services.

Cultural competence: In this chapter, a group of skills, attitudes, and knowledge that allows persons, organizations, and systems to work effectively with diverse racial, ethnic, and social groups.

Depression: Depression is a state of low mood that is described differently by people who experience it. Commonly described are feelings of sadness, despair, emptiness, or loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all things. Depression can also be experienced in other disorders, such as bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder).

Diagnosable mental illness: This term includes all people with a mental illness in a specified population group, whether or not they have received a formal diagnosis from a medical or mental health professional.

Homeless: A person who lacks housing. The definition also includes a person living in transitional housing or a person who spends most nights in a supervised public or private facility providing temporary living quarters.

Juvenile justice facility: Includes detention centers, shelters, reception or diagnostic centers, training schools, ranches, forestry camps or farms, halfway houses and group homes, and residential treatment centers for young offenders.

Mental health services: Diagnostic, treatment, and preventive care that helps improve how persons with mental illness feel both physically and emotionally as well as how they interact with other persons. These services also help persons who have a strong risk of developing a mental illness.

Mental illness: The term that refers collectively to all diagnosable mental disorders. Mental disorders are health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior (or some combination thereof), that are all mediated by the brain and associated with distress and/or impaired functioning. Mental disorders spawn a host of human problems that may include personal distress, impaired functioning and disability, pain, or death. These disorders can occur in men and women of any age and in all races and ethnic groups. They can be the result of family history, genetics, or other biological, environmental, social, or behavioral factors that occur alone or in combination.

Resilience: Manifested competence in the context of significant challenges to adaptation or development.

Schizophrenia: A mental disorder lasting for at least 6 months, including at least 1 month with two or more active-phase symptoms. Active phase symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, and other symptoms. Schizophrenia is accompanied by marked impairment in social or occupational functioning.

Screening for mental health problems: A brief formal or informal assessment to identify persons who have mental health problems or are likely to develop such problems. The screening process helps determine whether a person has a problem and, if so, the most appropriate mental health services for that person.

Serious emotional disturbance (SED): A diagnosable mental disorder found in persons from birth to 18 years of age that is so severe and long lasting that it seriously interferes with functioning in family, school, community, or other major life activities.

Serious mental illness (SMI): A diagnosable mental disorder found in persons aged 18 years and older that is so long lasting and severe that it seriously interferes with a person's ability to take part in major life activities.

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