---
title: Behavioral and Mental Health Terminology
description: Use this glossary to explain common terms patients, families, and healthcare professionals may hear when discussing emotional well-being, mental health symptoms, treatment, substance use, and safety.
---
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# Behavioral and Mental Health Terminology
## Behavioral and mental health care may include assessment, counseling, medicines, practical support, and crisis services. A person’s description of their experience is important clinical information.
### Symptoms and experiences
- Anxiety: A feeling of worry, fear, or unease that may include physical symptoms.
- Depressed mood: A persistent or recurring feeling of sadness, emptiness, or low mood.
- Panic attack: A sudden episode of intense fear or discomfort with physical or psychological symptoms.
- Intrusive thought: An unwanted thought, image, or urge that enters a person’s awareness.
- Hallucination: A sensory experience, such as hearing a voice, without a corresponding external stimulus.
- Delusion: A strongly held belief that is not supported by reality and is evaluated in its clinical and cultural context.
- Flashback: An experience of feeling as though a previous traumatic event is happening again.
- Insomnia: Difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or obtaining adequate sleep.
### Conditions and treatment
- Depression: A mental health condition that may affect mood, interest, energy, sleep, thinking, and daily functioning.
- Bipolar disorder: A condition involving episodes of depression and mania or hypomania, depending on the type.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): A condition that may develop after exposure to trauma and involve re-experiencing, avoidance, and other symptoms.
- Substance use disorder: A pattern of substance use causing clinically significant impairment or distress.
- Withdrawal: Symptoms that may occur after reducing or stopping a substance on which the body has become dependent.
- Psychotherapy: Treatment using structured psychological methods and therapeutic communication.
- Coping skills: Strategies used to manage stress, emotions, or difficult situations.
- Medication management: Review and adjustment of medicines by an authorized healthcare professional.
### Safety and support
- Suicidal thoughts: Thoughts about ending one’s own life.
- Self-harm: Intentional injury to oneself, which may or may not involve an intention to die.
- Safety plan: A personalized plan identifying warning signs, coping strategies, support contacts, and actions during a crisis.
- Crisis assessment: An evaluation of urgent mental health needs and safety concerns.
- Support system: People or services available to provide practical or emotional help.
- Confidentiality: Protection of private information, subject to applicable legal and professional requirements.
Terminology, diagnostic practices, confidentiality requirements, and crisis procedures may vary by country and care setting. A mental health professional can explain the relevant assessment or treatment. Interpreters should preserve statements about self-harm or safety accurately and follow established emergency protocols rather than independently assessing risk.
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