A Mental Health Glossary

Mental health concepts are powerful. Used correctly, they give a person direction. Used incorrectly, they label, frighten, or narrow relationships. For this reason every concept in this glossary should be used not to make a diagnosis, but to better understand the booklets you are reading.

If a concept feels familiar, instead of immediately applying it to yourself or to someone else, ask this question: In what context, and over what duration and intensity, does this concept carry meaning?

Symptom: The complaint that a person experiences and expresses themselves. Experiences such as sadness, fear, palpitations, insomnia, difficulty concentrating, and physical tension can be symptoms.

Sign: An indicator that can be observed from the outside. Withdrawal, restlessness, slowed speech, avoidance, reduced self-care, or behavioral changes can be signs.

Diagnosis: The naming of symptoms and signs within specific criteria, duration, severity, level of functioning, differential diagnosis, and clinical evaluation. A diagnosis is not the whole person.

Functioning: The degree to which a person is able to maintain their responsibilities in work, school, family, relationships, social life, physical self-care, and daily tasks. It is one of the most important areas in assessing psychological difficulties.

Insight: A person's capacity to recognize that what they are experiencing may be a problem. In some conditions insight is high; in others it may be low.

Avoidance: Staying away from situations that cause anxiety. It brings short-term relief but can lead to fear persisting in the long term.

Safety behavior: Actions a person takes to prevent a feared outcome, but which can maintain anxiety over time. Checking one's pulse constantly, repeatedly seeking reassurance, not going out alone, or excessive checking are examples.

Exposure: A therapeutic method that allows a person to approach avoided situations in a safe, gradual, and structured way. It is not about frightening someone unprepared.

Catastrophizing: The tendency to interpret a symptom, event, or possibility in terms of the worst possible outcome. For example: "My heart is beating fast, I must be having a heart attack."

Automatic thought: A thought that passes quickly through the mind in response to an event, often affecting emotion without being noticed.

Cognitive distortion: The systematic biasing of thinking. All-or-nothing thinking, mind reading, catastrophizing, overgeneralization, and selective attention are examples.

Schema: Long-standing core belief patterns a person holds about themselves, other people, and the world. Such as "I am inadequate," "People are untrustworthy," or "The world is dangerous."

Emotion regulation: A person's ability to notice, name, and carry intense emotions, and to manage their behavior even in the presence of those emotions.

Validation: Trying to understand a person's emotion and experience and helping them feel seen. It is not the same as agreement.

Psychoeducation: Explanatory work that helps a person acquire reliable information about their condition. It can be part of treatment, but it is not treatment on its own.

Psychotherapy: A professional process conducted with a trained specialist, aimed at understanding and changing patterns of emotion, thought, behavior, and relationships.

Psychiatry: The medical specialty concerned with the evaluation and diagnosis of mental disorders and, when needed, their pharmacological treatment.

Comorbidity: The co-occurrence of more than one psychological or physical condition in a single person. For example, depression and anxiety appearing together.

Remission: A state in which symptoms have decreased markedly or disappeared.

Relapse: The reemergence of symptoms that had improved or subsided.

Do not use the concepts in this glossary hastily to define others. Phrases like "You are a narcissist," "You are borderline," or "You are obsessive" rarely improve a relationship. The language of impact and need is more useful: "This behavior exhausts me," "I do not feel safe in this situation," or "It would help us to address this together with support."