Glossary

Adaptive coping strategies: Coping strategies, including problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping.

Adverse childhood experiences: Potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, parental loss, or parental separation before the child is 18 years old.

Coping: Cognitive and behavioral efforts made to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts.^[1]

Coping strategies: An action, series of actions, or a thought process used in meeting a stressful or unpleasant situation or in modifying one’s reaction to such a situation.^[2]

Defense mechanisms: Unconscious reaction patterns used by individuals to protect themselves from anxiety that arises from stress and conflict.^[3]

Dissociation: Feeling of disconnection from one’s senses, thoughts, memories, emotions, and behaviors. Severe forms may occur with a history of trauma.

Emotion-focused coping: Adaptive coping strategies such as practicing mindfulness, meditation, and yoga; using humor and jokes; seeking spiritual or religious pursuits; engaging in physical activity or breathing exercises; and seeking social support.

Environmental risk assessment: Identification of physical environment features that could be used to attempt suicide in clients identified as at a high risk for suicide.

Health disparities: Health differences that are linked with social, economic, and/or environmental disadvantages.

Health equity: A goal of everyone having a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.

Health inequities: Avoidable differences in health status seen within and between communities.

Human trafficking victims: Individuals forced to work or provide commercial sex against their will in legal business settings and underground markets.

Maladaptive coping responses: Ineffective responses to stressors such as avoidance of the stressful condition, withdrawal from a stressful environment, disengagement from stressful relationships, and misuse of drugs and/or alcohol.

Marginalization: The process of being treated as less significant by a social group, which may lead to diminished access to resources.

Migrant worker: A person who moves within their home country or outside of it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not intend to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.

Non-suicidal self-injury: The deliberate destruction of one’s own body tissues without suicidal intent, often used to manage emotions.

Problem-focused coping: Adaptive coping strategies that typically focus on seeking treatment such as counseling or cognitive behavioral therapy.

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

Resilient zone: The existence of balance between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing for emotional regulation and clear thinking.

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.

Somatization: The experience of psychological distress being expressed through physical symptoms such as headaches or body pain.

Stress response: The body’s physiological response to a real or perceived stressor. For example, the respiratory, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal systems are activated to breathe rapidly, stimulate the heart to pump more blood, dilate the blood vessels, and increase blood pressure to deliver more oxygenated blood to the muscles.

Stressors: Any internal or external event, force, or condition that results in physical or emotional stress.

Suicide: The act of intentionally causing one’s own death.

Suicide attempt: The act of trying to cause one’s own death but surviving.

Suicidal ideation: Thoughts of killing oneself that may include a method and how to obtain the means.

Suicide risk assessment: Identifying the risk of a client dying by suicide by assessing suicidal ideation, plan, intent, suicidal or self-harm behaviors, risk factors, and protective factors.

Telehealth: The use of digital technologies to deliver medical care, health education, and public health services by connecting multiple users in separate locations.

Trauma: An event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful and can have lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.

Trauma-informed care (TIC): A strengths-based framework that acknowledges the prevalence and impact of traumatic experiences in clinical practice. TIC emphasizes physical, psychological, and emotional safety for both survivors and health professionals and creates opportunities for survivors to rebuild a sense of control and empowerment referred to as resilience.

Vulnerable population: A group of individuals who are at increased risk for health problems and health disparities.

Workplace violence: The act or threat of violence, ranging from verbal abuse to physical assaults, directed toward persons at work or on duty.