Mental Health Nursing Terminology

MENTAL HEALTH NURSING 

MENTAL HEALTH NURSING TERMINOLOGY

OVERVIEW

Mental Health Nursing is vast subject and its is a branch of science and evidence based practice to enhance psychiatric nursing otherwise known as Mental Health Nursing. 

Addiction: Dependence on a chemical substance to the extent that a physiological and/or psychological need  is established. Withdrawal symptoms are manifested when the substance is removed. Symptoms may include  tolerance, withdrawal, and preoccupation with obtaining and using the substance. Narcotics, alcohol, and most sedative drugs may produce addiction. Addictive disorders are not diagnosed when withdrawal results from medication taken as prescribed.


Affect: External expression of emotional responsiveness. Affect refers to fluctuating emotional changes, in 
contrast to more sustained emotion (see Mood). Some types of affect are: within normal range, constricted, blunted, flat, inappropriate, or labile.

Agoraphobia: Anxiety about being in places in which escape might be difficult or embarrassing should a 
panic attack occur. Fears typically relate to leaving one’s home, being in a crowd, or traveling by car or plane. 
Agoraphobia usually occurs as part of panic disorder.

Akinesia:  Absence or poverty of movements

Alcoholism: A disorder marked 
by a pathological pattern of alcohol
use that causes serious impairment in social or
occupational functioning (alcohol abuse).

Alzheimer’s Disease: A degenerative organic mental disease with diffuse brain deterioration and dementia. It 
is the most common form of dementia, characterized by gradual onset and continuing decline of memory and 
other cognitive functions.

Amnesia: Pathogenic impairment of memory

Anesthesia: Loss of feeling or sensation, especially the loss of pain
sensation induced to permit the performance of surgery or
other painful procedures.

Anoxia: Absence of oxygen supply to tissues despite adequate
perfusion of the tissue by blood (hypoxia)

Anxiolytic: A drug having an antianxiety effect and used widely to relieve emotional tension. The most 
commonly used antianxiety drugs are the benzodiazepines.

Aphonia: Loss of voice, inability to produce vocal sounds.

Apraxia: Loss of ability to carry out familiar purposeful movements in
the absence of major or sensory impairment, especially
inability to use objects correctly.

Atonic: Lack of normal tone of the muscle or strength.

Autism: The condition of being dominated by subjective, self￾centered trends of thought or behavior which are not
subject to correction by external information.

Cataract: An opacity of the crystalline lens of the eye or its capsule

Cerebral Palsy: Persistent qualitative motor disorder, appearing
before age three.

Comorbidity: The simultaneous appearance of two or more illnesses, such as the co-occurrence of 
schizophrenia and substance abuse or of alcohol dependence and depression.

Compulsion: Repetitive, ritualistic behavior such as handwashing that aims to prevent or reduce stress. 
The person feels driven to perform such actions, though the behaviors are recognized to be excessive or 
unreasonable.

Dementia: Defuse brain dysfunction characterized by a gradual, progressive and chronic deterioration of intellectual function.

Delusion: A false personal belief based on incorrect inference about external reality and firmly maintained in spite of incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.

Dependence (Substance): Habituation to, abuse of, and/or addiction to a chemical substance. Largely 
because of psychological craving, the life of the drug-dependent person revolves around the need for the 
special effect of one or more chemical agents on mood or state of consciousness. Dependence includes not  only the addiction (which emphasizes physiological dependence), but also drug abuse (where the pathologic  craving for drugs seems unrelated to physical dependence). Examples: 
 alcohol, opiates, barbiturates, other hypnotics, sedatives and some antianxiety agents, cocaine, marijuana.

Depersonalization/derealization: Feelings of unreality or strangeness concerning either the environment, the 
self, or both.

                              ( OR )

Depersonalization: Alteration in the perception of self so that the
usual sense of one’s own reality is temporarily lost or changed. It may be a manifestation of a neurosis or another mental illness or can occur in mild form in normal persons.

Diagnosis: The process of determining, through examination and analysis, the nature of a patient’s illness.
The purpose of diagnosis is to identify mental disorders and psychological responses to physical illness. 

Disorientation: Loss of awareness of the position of the self in relation to space, time, or other persons; 
confusion.

Dissociation: The splitting off of clusters of mental content from conscious awareness, often the result of 
psychic trauma. 

Distractibility: Inability to maintain attention; shifting from one area or topic to another with minimal 
provocation. Distractibility may be a manifestation of an underlying medical disease, medication side effect, 
or a mental disorder such as an anxiety disorder, mania, or schizophrenia.

Downs syndrome: Mongoloid features, short phalanges, widened
space between the first and second toes and fingers, and moderate to severe mental retardation: associated with a
chromosomal abnormality usually     (trisomy of chromosome 21 ).

Dual Diagnosis: In mental health settings this term refers to the dual diagnosis of mental illness with 
substance abuse of alcohol and/or drugs. Comorbidity is the preferred term.

Dysthymia: Dysthymia is conceptualized as a chronic disorder, not an episodic disorder with extended 
asymptomatic periods

ECT : Electroconvulsive therapy.

Ego: Segment of the personality dominated by the reality principle
comprising integrative and executive aspects functioning.
The ego is able to adapt the forces and pressures of the
superego and the requirements of external reality by
conscious perception, thought and learning.

Fixation stage: The cessation of psycho sexual development before
maturity.

Flight of Ideas: A nearly continuous flow of accelerated speech with abrupt changes from topic to topic that are usually based on understandable associations, distracting stimuli, or plays on words. When severe, 
speech may be disorganized and incoherent. Sometimes seen in bipolar disorder.

Fugue state: A dissociative reaction in which amnesia is
accompanied by physical flight from customary
surroundings.

Grandiosity: Exaggerated belief or claims of one’s importance or identity, often manifested by delusions 
of great wealth, power, or fame.

Hallucination: A sensory perception that has the compelling sense of reality of a true perception but that 
occurs in the absence of an external stimulus and is not under voluntary control. May occur in any of the 
senses. 
Example:
  Auditory, gustatory, olfactory, somatic, tactile, visual.

Hyperbillirubinemia: Excess of bilirubin in the blood classified
conjugated or unconjugated, according to the predominant
form of bilirubin present.

Hypoglycemia: Deficiency of glucose concentration in the blood
which may lead to nervolegness, hypothermia, headache,
confusion, and sometimes convulsions and common.

Hypothyroidism: Deficiency of thyroid activity.

Identity: The sense of self and unity of personality over time; one element of identity is gender identity.

Intoxication (Substance): The acute effects of overdosage with chemical substances that cause maladaptive 
behavior because of their effects on the central nervous system

ID: That paart of the personality that is an unconscious reservoir of
primitive drives and instincts dominated by the pleasure principle.

illusion: A mental impression derived from misinterpretation of an
actual experience.

Judgment: Orientation, memory, affect or emotional stability,
cognition, and attention.

Kernicterus: A condition with severe neural symptoms, associated
with high levels of bilirubin in the blood.

Labelle indifference: An inappropriate lack of concern, indifference.

Loosening of Associations: A disturbance of thinking in which ideas shift from one subject to another in 
an unrelated manner. The speaker is unaware of the disturbance. When loosening of associations is severe, 
speech may be incoherent. Contrast with flight of ideas.

Mania: It is an abnormally elated mental state, typically ccarecterized
by feelings of euphoria, lack of inhibitions, racing thoughts, diminished need for sleep, talkativeness, risk taking, and
irritability. In extreme cases , mania can induce hallucination
and other psychotic symptoms.

Magical Thinking: The erroneous belief that one’s thoughts, words, or actions will cause or prevent a 
specific outcome in some way that defies commonly understood laws of cause and effect. A conviction that 
equates thinking with doing.

Malingering: Deliberate simulation or exaggeration of an illness or disability in order to avoid an unpleasant 
situation or to obtain some type of personal gain. 

Manic Episode: A period of mood disturbance characterized by excessive elation, hyperactivity, agitation, 
and accelerated thinking and speaking. It is sometimes manifested as flight of ideas, or involvement in 
pleasurable activities with high potential for painful consequences (e.g., buying sprees, sexual indiscretions).
Mania is seen in mood disorders and in certain toxic and drug-induced states.

Mental Disorder (Mental Illness): A persistent mental state that leads to significant distress or disability. 
An illness with biological, psychological, and sociological components, and characterized by symptoms 
and/or impairment in functioning.

MICA: A formerly used term referring to “mentally ill chemical abuser.” (See Dual Diagnosis)

Mood: A pervasive and sustained emotion that, in the extreme, markedly colors one’s perception of the 
world. Common examples of mood include depression, elation, anger, and anxiety.

Myoclonics: Shock-like contractions of a muscle or a group of
muscles.

Neurosis: A descriptive term used to differentiate non psychotic
clinical symptoms.

Neuroleptic: A term used for older conventional antipsychotics such as chlorpromazine, which caused 
notable psychomotor side effects. The newer atypical antipsychotic drugs are less likely to cause these side 
effects, and neuroleptic is no longer synonymous with the term antipsychotic.

Obsession: A persistent, unwanted idea or impulse that cannot be expunged by logic or reasoning.

Panic Attack: Discrete periods of sudden onset of intense apprehension, fearfulness, or terror often 
associated with feelings of impending doom, fear of going crazy or losing control, and physical symptoms 
such as shortness of breath, palpitations or accelerated heart rate, chest pain or discomfort, and choking.
The symptoms reach a crescendo within 10 minutes.

Paranoia: A rare condition characterized by a delusional system that
develops gradually, becomes fixed, and is based on the
misinterpretation of actual event.

Phobia: A persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that results in a compelling 
desire to avoid it. This exposure almost invariably provokes an immediate anxiety response or panic attack 
even though the fear is recognized as obsessive or unreasonable.

Personality disorder: A non psychotic illness characterized by
maladaptive behavior that the person uses to fulfill his her
need and bring satisfaction to self. As a result of the
inability to relate to the environment, the person acts out
conflicts socially.

Petitimal epilepsy : one type of epilepsy seem in children, in which
there is sudden momentary unconsciousness with only
minor myoclonic jerks

Phetoscope: A specially designed stethoscope for listening to the
fetal heart beat.

Primary illness gain: obtaining relief from anxiety by using defense
mechanism to keep an internal need or conflict out of
awareness.

Psychiatric Disorder: (Mental Disorder).

Psychosis: A severe mental disorder in which a person experiences
an impairment of the ability to remember, think,
communicate, respond emotionally, interpret reality, and
behave appropriately.

Psychotic: A term that describes the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, as well as impaired reality 
testing, with creation of a new reality. (see Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders on 
Clinical Disorders handout)

Psychotropic: A term to describe drugs or a drug used to alter abnormal thinking, feelings, or behavior; 
traditionally divided into classes of antipsychotic, antidepressant, mood stabilizers, and antianxiety 
(anxiolytic) drugs.

Remission: Abatement of an illness (decrease in amount, intensity, or degree). Active symptoms of an 
illness are in “remission.”

Schizophrenia: A serious psychiatric disorder characterized by
impaired communication with loss of contact with reality
and deterioration from a previous level of functioning in
work, social relations, or self care.

Secondary illness gain: Any benefit or support that a person obtains
as a result of being sick, other than relief from anxiety.

Somatization: The tendency to experience and report numerous somatic symptoms, associated with 
emotional disturbance and/or excessive treatment seeking for physical symptoms.

Somnambulism: Sleep walking; rising out of bed and walking about
during an apparent state of sleep.

Spinabifida: A developmental anomaly marked by defective closure
of the boney encasement of the spinal cord through which
the meanings may or may not protrude.

Status epilepticus: Rapid succession of epileptic spasms with out
interlining periods of consciousness.

Substance Abuse: Impairment in functioning resulting from a pathological and “compulsive” use of a 
chemical substance such as alcohol or drugs. Largely because of psychological craving, the life of the substance abusing person can revolve around the need for the specific effect of the “abusing substance.”

Super ego: the aspect of the personality that acts as a monitor and
evaluator of ego functioning comparing it with an ideal
standard, In psychoanalysis.

Syndrome: A configuration of signs and symptoms that occur together and suggest a common underlying 
pathogenesis, course, familial pattern, or treatment solution.

Tic: An intermittent, involuntary, spasmodic movement of a group of muscles, often without a demonstrable 

external stimulus. A tic may be an expression of an emotional conflict, the result of a neurologic disorder, or 

an effect of a drug.

Tolerance (Substance): The need for markedly increased amounts of a substance to achieve the desired 

effect that results from repeated use of a drug. People vary widely in the amount of substance they can 

tolerate independent of their experience with the substance; alcohol tolerance is an example.

Withdrawal: The constellation of symptoms that occurs when blood or tissue concentrations of a substance 

decline in individuals with previous prolonged or heavy use of the substance.

These all about psychiatrics or child health nursing  terminology editing, writing, modifications, adding, rewriting and removing by 

        

 Dr.  C. KUMARAN,

  P hD. PSYCHIATRICS. 

WARMLY THANKS TO

OUR HONOURABLE AND RESPECTED FACULTY 

 Dr.  C. Kumaran,
 P. hD. Psychiatrics, 
 HOD. Of PSYCHIATRICS, 
 TAMILNADU, INDIA. 

+91 9543076196