Glossary

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): Traumatic circumstances experienced during childhood such as abuse, neglect, or growing up in a household with violence, mental illness, substance use, incarceration, or divorce.

Assimiliation: The process of adopting or conforming to practices, habits, and norms of another cultural group.

Boundaries: Limits that we set as individuals that define our levels of comfort when interacting with others. Personal boundaries include limits in physical, sexual, intellectual, emotional, sexual, and financial areas of our lives.

Crisis: The inability to cope or adapt to a stressor resulting in distress.

Culture: A set of beliefs, attitudes, and practices shared by a group of people and which is passed down to other members of the group.

Cultural Diversity: The existence of a variety of cultural or ethnic groups within a society.

Cultural humility: A lifelong process of self-reflection and self-critique, where individuals not only learn about other cultures but also examine their own beliefs and biases.

Deviance: Behavior that violates social norms or cultural expectations because one’s culture determines what is “normal.”

Distress: Psychological and/or physical pain.

Dysfunction: Disturbances in a person’s thinking, emotional regulation, or behavior that reflects significant dysfunction in psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.

Health: A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Impairment: A limited ability to engage in activities of daily living (i.e., they cannot maintain personal hygiene, prepare meals, or pay bills) or participate in social events, work, or school.

Inclusiveness: The practice of ensuring equal access to opportunities and resources, including healthcare, to all people.

Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of all social categorizations such as culture, ethnicity, sexual identity, as they apply to an individual or group.

Major life activities: Activities of daily living such as caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working^[1]

Mental health: A state of well-being in which an individual realizes their own abilities, copes with the normal stresses of life, works productively, and contributes to their community.^[2]

Mental health continuum: A continuum of mental health, ranging from well-being to emotional problems to mental illness.

Mental illness: A health condition involving changes in emotion, thinking, or behavior (or a combination of these) associated with emotional distress and problems functioning in social, work, or family activities.^[3] 

Recovery: The process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.

Resilience: The ability to rise above circumstances or meet challenges with fortitude.^[4]

Safety plan: A prioritized written list of coping strategies and sources of support that clients can use before or during a suicidal crisis. The plan should be brief, in the client’s own words, and easy to read. After the plan is developed, the nurse should problem solve with the client to identify barriers or obstacles to using the plan. It should be discussed where the client will keep the safety plan and how it will be located during a crisis.

Serious mental illness: Mental illness that causes disabling functional impairment that substantially interferes with one or more major life activities. Examples of serious mental illnesses that commonly interfere with major life activities include major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.^[5] 

Social determinants of health (SDOH): The conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age.

Social norms: Stated and unstated rules of an individual’s society.

Stigma: A cluster of negative attitudes and beliefs that motivates the general public to fear, reject, avoid, and discriminate against people with mental health disorders.

Well-being: The “healthy” range of the mental health continuum where individuals are experiencing a state of good mental and emotional health.