This document defines several key terms used in mental health and psychiatric nursing. It provides definitions for terms like mental health, psychiatry, psychiatric nursing, and then proceeds to define over 50 additional terms used to describe various mental health conditions, behaviors, symptoms, and treatment approaches, including terms like abreaction, addiction, affect, agitation, amnesia, anxiety, apathy, delusion, dementia, hallucination, and mania. The document is intended to serve as a reference for terminology used in the fields of mental health and psychiatric nursing.

1. TERMINOLOGIES
MENTAL HEALTH
NURSING
1
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri
MR. BASAVARAJ S HUKKERI
DEPT OF MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
BELGAUM, KARNATAKA

2. MENTAL HEALTH
It is a state of balance between the individual
and surrounding world, a state of harmony
between oneself and others, a co-existence between
the realities of the self and that of other people and
the environment.
An adjustment of human beings to the world
& to each other with a maximum of effectiveness
& happiness.
2
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

3. PSYCHIATRY
It is a branch of medicine that deals
with the diagnosis, treatment and
prevention of mental illness
3
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

4. PSYCHIATRIC NURSING
Mental health nursing, also known as
psychiatric nursing, is a specialized field of
nursing practice that involves the care of
individuals with a mental health disorder to help
them recover and improve their quality of life.
4
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

5. TERMINOLOGIES
ABREACTION:
A treatment procedure whereby repressed
painful experiences are voluntarily recalled to
awareness.
ADDICTION:
Strong dependence, both physical and
emotional, on alcohol or some other material.
5
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

6. AFFECT:
A short lived emotional response to an idea or an
event.
AGITATION:
Presence of anxiety with severe motor restlessness.
AGNOSIA:
A rare disorder whereby a patient is unable to
recognize and identify objects, persons, or sounds using
one or more of their senses despite otherwise normally
functioning senses.
6
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

7. AGOROPHOBIA:
Fear of being in a place from which escape
might be difficult.
AKATHISIA:
Motor restlessness, inability to sit still.
AMBIVALENCE:
The co-existence of two opposing drives,
desires, feelings or emotions towards the same
person, object or goal; a conflict to do or not to do.
7
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

8. AMNESIA:
Pathological impairment of memory.
ANHEDONIA:
Inability to experience pleasure in any activity.
ANOREXIA NERVOSA:
Disorder characterized by extreme concern with
body weight, an intense fear of becoming fat, and
maintenance of body weight below expected levels
for height and age.
8
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

9. ANXIETY:
A feeling of being anxious or excessive
uneasiness
ANXIOLYTIC:
Drug agent used to counteract or diminish
anxiety.
APATHY:
Lack of emotional feeling.
9
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

10. APHASIA:
Absence or impairment of the ability to
communicate through speech, writing, or signs, due
to dysfunction of brain centers.
APRAXIA:
Inability to carryout normal activities despite
intact motor function.
AVOLITION:
Lack of motivation.
10
Mr. Anilkumar Jarali

11. BLACK OUT:
Sudden loss of consciousness; an episode of
forgetting all part of what occurred during or
following a period of alcohol intake.
BULIMIA NERVOSA
Eating disorder characterized by periods of
significant overeating and inappropriate methods of
compensating for the overeating to prevent weight
gain such as self-induced vomiting, use of laxative or
diuretics, and excessive exercises 11
Mr. Anilkumar Jarali

12. CATAPLEXY
Temporary loss of muscle tone and weakness
precipitated by a variety of emotional states.
CIRCUMSTANTIALITY
A pattern of communication that is
demonstrated by the speakers inclusion of many
irrelevant and unnecessary details in his speech
before he is able to come to the point.
12
Mr. Anilkumar Jarali

13. CONFABULATION;
The unconscious filling of memory gaps by
imagined or untrue experience due to memory
impairment. It is most often associated with
organic pathology.
CONVERSION:
Process by which a psychological thought,
event, or memory is transferred to a physical or
sensory symptom.
13
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

14. CRAVING:
Strong inner drive to use a substance in
situations of substance dependence.
CRISIS:
Psychological disequilibrium in a person who
confronts a hazardous circumstances that
constitutes an important problem which for the
time he or she can neither escape nor solve with
usual problem solving resources.
14
Mr. Anilkumar Jarali

15. CYCLOTHYMIA:
A chronic mood disturbance involving
numerous episodes of hypomania and depression
mood, of insufficient severity or duration to meet
the criteria for bipolar disorder.
DELIRIUM:
A state of mental confusion and excitement
that happens in a short period of time and is
characterized by disorientation for time and
place usually with illusions and hallucinations. 15
Mr. Anilkumar Jarali

16. DELUSION:
A false, unshakeable belief.
DEMENTIA:
Broad impairment of intellectual function that
is progressive and interferes with normal social
and occupational activities.
DEPERSONALIZATION:
A person’s subjective sense of being unreal,
strange or unfamiliar.
16
Mr. Anilkumar Jarali

17. DEREALIZATION:
A subjective sense that the environment is
strange or unreal; a feeling of changed reality.
DISORIENTATION:
Inability to be cognizant of time, direction or
location, and person.
DYSTONIA:
Muscle rigidity that affects posture, gait, eye
movements.
17
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

18. ECHOLALIA:
Pathological repetition by imitation of the
speech of other.
ECHOPRAXIA:
Pathological repetition of the behaviour of
another.
ECT:
Electroconvulsive therapy.
18
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

19. ENCOPRESIS:
Involuntary passage of feces in inappropriate
places after age of voluntary control has been
established.
ENURESIS:
Involuntary passage of urine after age of
voluntary control has been established.
EUPHORIA:
Excessive feeling of happiness or elation.
19
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

20. FLIGHT OF IDEAS:
Rapid shift between topics that are unrelated
to each other.
GRIEF:
Emotional process of coping with a loss.
HALLUCINATIONS:
A false sensory perception in the absence of
an actual external stimulus.
20
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

21. ILLUSION:
The misinterpretation of a real, external sensory
experience.
JUDGMENT:
Judgment is the mental act of comparing and
evaluating alternatives for the purpose of deciding on
a course of action.
MANIA:
A type of bipolar disorder in which the
predominant mood is elevated, expansive or irritable.
21
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

22. MOOD:
Emotion that is prolonged to the point that it
colors a person’s entire psychological thinking.
NEOLOGISM:
A word newly coined or an everyday word
used in a special way, not readily understood by
others.
22
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

23. PARALALIA:
Repetitious sometimes continuous repetition of
one word.
PHOBIA:
Persistent, irrational, exaggerated and invariably
pathological dread of a specific stimulus or situation.
STUTTERING:
Repetitive or prolonged sounds or syllables with
pauses and monosyllabic broken words.
23
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

24. TANGENTIALITY:
A form of thinking/ speech in which the client
tends to wander away from the intended point,
and never returning to the original idea.
THOUGHT BLOCK:
A sudden interruption in the thought process
before the thought is completed.
24
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri

25. WAXY FLEXIBILITY:
A condition by which the individual with
schizophrenia passively yields all movable parts
of the body to any efforts made at placing them
in certain positions.
WORD SALAD:
Meaningless and incoherent mixture of words
or phrases.
25
Mr. Basavaraj S Hukkeri