Mental Health

Defining Mental Health

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines "mental health" as:

"...how a person thinks, feels, and acts when faced with life's situations. It is how people look at themselves, their lives, and the other people in their lives; (how they) evaluate challenges and problems; and (how they) explore choices. This includes handling stress, relating to other people, and making decisions."

So, mental health is all of these things:

  • how we feel
  • how we think
  • how we act in different situations
  • how we look at life
  • how we see ourselves
  • how we see other people
  • how we how we handle challenges
  • how we make choices
  • how we deal with stress
  • how we relate to people

·Promoting Wellness

Children's mental health requires maintenance just as their physical health requires maintenance. Every child needs support and guidance to develop skills, character traits, and resilience that will ensure wellness and success in life.

Consider this:

Immunizations are generally excepted as "normal" maintenance of a child's health and well-being. In fact, children in the U.S. are not permitted to attend school without proof of having been immunized from things such as measles and mumps.

No one likes taking a child to the doctor to get a shot; but, we accept immunizations as a tool to help our children grow into strong and healthy adults.

Preventative mental health services and mental health services that reach children early are just as important as immunizations. Yet, while a single outbreak of the measles makes the news and triggers quarantines, one in five Americans (including children) is living with a mental health disorder. Sadly, estimates are that about two-thirds of people with mental health diosrders do not seek treatment.

(Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, 1999).

Mental health is about wellness.

And, it's part of every child and every family's life.

·Stigma-Busting Resources

  • "People First Language" One of our favorite strength-based authors, Kathie Snow, has given us permission to share her article, "People First Language". You may print and hand out this article, but please request her permission to distribute, reprint, or post this article in any other way.
  • The Elimination of Barriers Initiative is our new favorite anti-stigma website. Be sure to check out "myths and facts" link. Don't miss the "GET TOOLS" links (bottom right) for businesses and schools -- featuring downloadable full-color antistigma posters, training tools, and ready-to-print articles.
  • The ADS Center is SAMHSA's resource center to address discrimination and stigma.

Here's a great link to SAMHSA

·Glossary of Terms

GLOSSARY OF TERMS USED IN CHILDREN'S

MENTAL HEALTH

  • Accessible Services: Services that are affordable, located nearby, and are open during evenings and weekends. Staff is sensitive to and incorporates individual and cultural values. Staff is also sensitive to barriers that may keep a person from getting help. For example, an adolescent may be more willing to attend a support group meeting in a church or club near home, rather than travel to a mental health center. An accessible service can handle consumer demand without placing people on a long waiting list.
  • Acute: Having a sudden onset and lasting a short time but demanding urgent attention. 
  • Administrators: Individuals that manage agency functions related to service delivery, training, human resources, financing, management information systems, and quality improvement.
  • Affect:  The visible expression of emotion, especially facial expression. "Flat affect" describes a plain, emotionless facial expression and body language.
  • Aggression: Words and action that are deemed to be threatening to others.
  • Anxiety: Exaggerated or inappropriate responses to the perception of internal or external dangers.  Includes panic disorders, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders, post-traumatic stress, and generalized anxiety disorders.
  • Appeal Process: These are the steps you must follow to get a decision about services reviewed and changed. Usually this involves proving why the decision was wrong or how it will harm your child and family. Often, you can appeal to a higher level if the first appeal does not get the result you want. You should be given information about the appeal process when you first start getting services. You should learn how to make an appeal and how to get help doing so.
  • Appropriate Services: Designed to meet the specific needs of each individual child and family. For example, one family may need day treatment services while another family may need home-based services. Appropriate services for one child or family may not be appropriate for another family. Usually the most appropriate services are in the child's community.
  • Assessment: Assessment services, sometimes referred to as diagnostic and evaluation services, involve a professional determination of the nature of an individual's problem, the factors contributing to the problem and the strengths and resources of the individual and family. Recommendations for treatment and services are based on this information. It is important for the provider and family together to decide what kind of treatment and supports, if any, are needed. Comprehensive assessments focus on the child, family and the environment in which they live. They address each child's individual culture and physical, mental/emotional and developmental condition. Assessment plays a particularly important role for children and youth with serious emotional disturbances because their problems are complex and do not fit established diagnostic categories. Assessment is also defined as a professional review of child and family needs that is done when services are first sought or periodically to assess progress. The assessment of the child includes a review of physical and mental health, intelligence, school performance, family situation, and behavior in the community. The assessment identifies the strengths of the child and family. Together, the provider and family decide what kind of treatment and supports, if any, are needed.
  • Assessment protocol: a set of guidelines that an agency or individual follows when conducting assessments.
  • Assessment tools: A variety of standardized instruments that are used to gather information about a person's functioning and/or level of need.
  • Attribute: An inherent quality or characteristic.
  • Behavioral Health Services and Supports: Coordinated and integrated healthcare with the goal of restoring optimal behavioral health through the treatment of mental health and substance abuse disorders. Includes a broad array of mental health, chemical dependency, forensic, mental retardation, developmental disability, and cognitive rehabilitation services that are not limited to any setting or facility. Incorporates a full continuum of treatment intensities (from emergency and acute care to rehabilitation to stabilization) as well as prevention interventions at individual, family and community levels.
  • Behavioral therapy: As the name implies, behavioral therapy focuses on changing unwanted behaviors through rewards, reinforcements, and desensitization.  Behavioral therapy often involves the cooperation of others, especially family and close friends, to reinforce a desired behavior.
  • Best practices: Most often is used to describe guidelines or practices driven more by clinical wisdom, guild organizations, or other consensus approaches that do not necessarily include systematic use of available research evidence.
  • Biopsychosocial assessment: The evaluation of a person's biological, psychological, and social factors to develop a comprehensive picture from which to base treatment.
  •  Blended Funding: The process of combining categorical funds from different sources and agencies into a single funding stream or "pool" to gain more flexibility in how these funds can be spent on individualized services. Once blended these funding sources are indistinguishable from each other. Blended funding can allow systems to fund activities that are not reimbursable through specific categorical programs. Systems must track, document and account for the funds they spend, whether using a blended or braided approach.
  • Braided Funding: Funds from various sources are used to pay for a coordinated package of services for individual children, but tracking and accountability for each pot of money is maintained at the administrative level. The funds remain in separate strands but are joined or "braided" for the individual child and family. Systems must track, document and account for the funds they spend, whether using a blended or braided approach.
  • Capacity building: Involves enhancing the ability of individuals, groups, organizations, and systems to mobilize and develop resources, skills and commitments needed to accomplish shared goals.
  • Care Manager or Service Coordinator: This is an individual who keeps track of the services and supports your child and family are receiving and makes sure that they are working together in a manner that is easy for your child and family to use. . (Alternate terms: advocate and facilitator.)
  • Care Management: A process to facilitate individual child and family care at critical treatment junctures to assure their care is coordinated, received when they need it, likely to produce good outcomes, and is neither too little nor too much service to achieve the desired results. This process establishes an identifiable point of accountability between the child and family and all helping systems.
  • Case manager: An individual who organizes and coordinates services and supports for children with mental health problems and their families
  • Case Rate: A fixed amount of money paid for each person who presents for covered services. May be expressed differently in different programs, e.g., per child per month or per child per episode of care.
  • Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale (CAFAS): is a rating scale, which assesses a youth's degree of impairment in day-to-day functioning due to emotional, behavioral, psychological, psychiatric, or substance use problems.
  • Child and Family Outcome Data: Data used for determining the impact of programs on the children and families served.
  • Child and Family Teams: Teams of children, families, providers and others who come together to develop individualized service plans. The team is usually made up of the providers and other agency representatives who work with the family, extended family members, and other support persons, such as neighbors or ministers. The family approves all team members. The team reviews each family's strengths and needs, identifies and plans for needed services and supports.
  • Child Find: A component of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that requires states to identify, locate, and evaluate all children with disabilities who are in need of early intervention or special education services.
  • Child welfare: Child service sector that focuses on child protection, foster care, and the overall care of children's health and living conditions. Defined also as being designed to safeguard the child when there is suspicion of abuse, neglect, or abandonment, or where there is no family to take care of the child. Examples of help delivered in the home include financial assistance, vocational training, homemaker services, and day care. If in-home supports are insufficient, the child may be removed from the home on a temporary or permanent basis. The goal is to keep the child with his or her family whenever possible.
  • Children and Adolescents at Risk for Mental Health Problems: Children at higher risk for developing mental health problems when certain factors occur in their lives or environment. Some of these factors are physical abuse, emotional abuse or neglect, harmful stress, discrimination, poverty, loss of loved one, frequent moving, alcohol and other drug use, trauma, and exposure to violence.
  • Clinic Option: A Medicaid optional benefit that allows for outpatient services to be provided through a wide variety of health care clinics including community mental health agencies. Services must be based at the clinic (except for services to homeless people) and supervised by a physician.
  •  Clinician:  An individual providing mental health services, such as a psychologist, social worker, or other therapist, as distinguished from a researcher or investigator. 
  • Cognitive therapy: Aims to identify and correct distorted thinking patterns that can lead to feelings and behaviors that may be troublesome, self-defeating, or even self-destructive.  The goal is to replace such thinking with a more balanced view that, in turn, leads to more fulfilling and productive behavior.
  • Cognitive behavioral therapy: A combination of cognitive and behavioral therapies which helps people change negative thought patterns, beliefs, and behaviors so they can manage symptoms and enjoy more productive, less stressful lives.
  • Community capacity: Refers to the ability of community members to use the assets of its residents, associations and institutions to improve quality of life. Each community's collection of assets will be unique, for it will reflect the specific characteristics of its population, its political structures and geography.
  • Confidentiality:  The limiting of access to a child's records to his/her parents and personnel having direct involvement with the child.
  • Conduct Problems: Behaviors that are characterized by acting out, ranging from annoying, minor oppositional behavior (yelling, temper tantrums) to more serious types of antisocial behavior (aggression, physical destruction, stealing).
  • Consent:  Informed consent requires that the person giving the permission understand the risks, benefits, and possible ramifications.
  • Consumer: Any individual who does or could receive health care or services. Includes other more specialized terms, such as beneficiary, client, customer, eligible member, recipient, or patient.
  • Continuous Quality Improvement: A strategy of continuously assessing the process and outcomes of service delivery to learn how to improve those processes to reach better outcomes and higher quality of mental health care.
  • Co-Occurring Disorder: A term referring to co-occurring substance-related, mental health or developmental disorders. At the individual level, a co-occurring disorder exists when at least one disorder of two types can be established independent of the other and is not simply a cluster of symptoms resulting from a single disorder.
  • Coordinated Services: Child-serving organizations, along with the family, talk with each other and agree upon a plan of care that meets the child's needs. These organizations can include mental health, education, juvenile justice, and child welfare. Case management is necessary to coordinate services.
  • Cost Benefit Data: Data on child/family outcomes and on system performance to use in weighing the cost of a service, policy, or procedure against the benefits achieved for children and families.
  • Cost Neutrality: Refers to the requirement that States applying for Medicaid waivers under sections 5, 5(b) and/or 5(c) must demonstrate that the program does not exceed what the federal government would have spent without approving the waiver. States can do this by showing that the average per capita expenditure estimated by the State in any fiscal year for medical assistance provided with respect to the group affected by the waiver does not exceed 100 percent of the average per capita expenditure that the State reasonably estimates would have been made in that fiscal year for expenditures under the state plan for such individuals if the waiver had not been granted. The concept of cost neutrality applies to other federal waivers also, e.g., Title IV-E.
  • Cost Shifting: The practice of one agency or system obtaining care for a child at the expense of another agency or system, i.e. shifting the cost of care from one agency to another.
  • Crisis Residential Treatment Services: Short-term, round-the-clock treatment provided in an unlocked, non-hospital setting during a crisis. The purpose of this treatment is to avoid hospitalization, stabilize the child, and determine the next steps.
  •   Crisis Team (Emergency Services):  Services available 24 hours/day, 7 days/week during a mental health crisis. The crisis team will determine the severity of the crisis and determine the next steps. A Designated Crisis Team serves every community. Sometimes known as Emergency and Crisis Services, Emergency Services Programs, Crisis Evaluation Teams, Emergency Screening Teams.
  • Cross-System: Implies that more than one child-serving agency or system participates in a service, a program, a training event, etc.
  • Cultural Competence: Understanding and appreciating the differences in individuals, families, and communities, which can include: thoughts, speech, actions, customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious or social group.  It also affects age, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or physical disability. It requires agencies and organizations to:  
    1. Have a defined set of values and principles, and demonstrate behaviors, attitudes, policies and structures that enable them to work effectively cross-culturally.
    2.  Have the capacity to value diversity, conduct self-assessment, manage the dynamics of difference, acquire and institutionalize cultural knowledge, adapt to diversity and the cultural contexts of the communities they serve.
    3. Incorporate the above in all aspects of policymaking, administration, practice, service delivery and involve systematically consumers, key stakeholders and communities.
  • Day Treatment: Nonresidential, intensive program of mental health services that allows the youth to return home at night. Day treatment includes special education, counseling, parent training, vocational training, skill building, crisis intervention, and recreational therapy. It lasts at least 4 hours a day. Day treatment programs work with mental health, recreation, and education organizations and may be provided by them.
  • Depression: A type of mood disorder characterized by low or irritable mood or loss of interest or pleasure in almost all activities over a period of time.1
  • Diagnosis/Diagnostic Formulation: The process of determining by examination the nature and circumstances of a mental health condition and the decision reached by such examination.
  • Disparities: Differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups in the United States. Research on health disparities related to socioeconomic status is also encompassed in the definition.
  • Disproportional: A situation in which a particular racial/ethnic group of children is represented at a higher percentage than other racial/ethnic groups. 
  • DSM-IV:  An official manual describing mental health disorders.
  • Early Intervention: A process for recognizing warning signs that individuals are at risk for mental health problems and taking early action against factors that put them at risk. Early intervention can help children get better more quickly and prevent problems from becoming worse.  
  • Eligibility Criteria: These are the admission criteria or the basis on which children and families are allowed to get services from an agency or program. These criteria usually include age, disability, and income. They can also include where you live, whether your child is male or female, what kind of medical insurance you have, or what other kinds of problems your family is dealing with.
  • Emergency and Crisis Services: A group of services that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to help during a mental health emergency. When a child is thinking about suicide, these services could save his or her life. Examples: telephone crisis hotlines, crisis counseling, crisis residential treatment services, crisis outreach teams, and crisis respite care.
  • Emerging Practices: Are new innovations in clinical or administrative practice that address critical needs of a particular program, population or system, but do not yet have scientific or broad expert consensus support.
  • Emotional Health: The well-being and appropriate expressions of one's emotions.
  • EPSDT (Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment): A Medicaid program that is designed to improve primary health benefits for children with an emphasis on preventive care. States must cover regular and periodic exams for all eligible children; and must provide any medically necessary services prescribed by the exams, even those not covered in a state's Medicaid plan.
  • Evaluation: A very specific process used to judge how well a program, service, or system is working. Different from our other ways of knowing and judging, such as intuition or opinion, it is a formal and systematic inquiry resulting in a judgment. The results are intended to be used to improve the program, service, or system evaluated. 
  • Evidence: Refers to data resulting from scientific controlled trials and research, expert or user consensus, evaluation, or anecdotal information.
  • Evidence-Based Assessment: Methods and processes that are based on empirical evidence, in terms of both reliability and validity as well as their clinical usefulness for prescribed populations and purposes.
  • Evidence-Based Care: The application of the best evidence available to treat in the health care community to improve the overall quality of care.
  • Evidence-Based Culture: Characteristics or features of organizations and systems that support the use of EBPs.
  • Evidence-Based Environment: An environment in health care that is represented by the practice and implementation of evidence-based interventions.
  •  Evidence-Based Practice (EBPs):  The provision of services in a manner that is: consistent with current professional knowledge; supported by careful, systematic, and rigorous research and evaluation; based on best clinical experience; and consistent with child/family values. . Defined also as practices that integrate the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values.
  • Family-Centered Services: Help designed to meet the specific needs of each individual child and family.
  • Family-Driven: Families have a primary decision making role in the care of their own children as well as the policies and procedures governing care for all children in their community, state, tribe, territory and nation. 
  • Family Focused:  A treatment approach that views the child as a member of a family and recognizes that everyone in a family can be affected by how the others act, what they say, how they feel, or how they are functioning. Decisions about services are made considering the family as a whole as well as the child with a mental health problem.
  • Family Involvement: Family Involvement is a collective effort requiring representation of all cultural, ethnic, and racial groups in the community in sufficient numbers so each has a real voice yet no one voice dominates the decision-making. The family voice and the decision-making must be as strong as that of other partners. Family experiences and perspectives collectively drive policy, service planning, implementation, and evaluation.
  • Family-Run Organizations: Advocacy and support organizations that are led by family members with expertise/experience in the field of mental health.
  • Fidelity: Adherence to the key elements of an evidence-based practice shown to be critical to achieving the positive results found in a controlled trial.  Studies indicate that the quality of implementation strongly influences outcomes.5
  • Fidelity Scale: Measurement instrument for assessing the extent to which information is delivered with fidelity.
  • Financial Readiness: The assessment of an organization, agency, or individual practice to determine the financial standing and ability to provide evidence-based practices.
  • HIPAA:   Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 HIPAA encompasses two important objectives: insurance reform and administrative simplification. The insurance reform provisions were largely applicable to private, employer-sponsored insurance plans. The administrative simplification provisions of HIPAA established national standards for claims and reimbursement services, as well as regulations to protect the privacy, and ensure the security, of an individual's medical record. 
  • Home-Based Services: Help provided in a family's home for either a defined time or for as long as necessary to deal with a mental health problem. Examples include parent training, counseling, and working with family members to identify, find, or provide other help they may need. The goal is to prevent the child from being placed out of the home. (Alternate term: in-home supports.)
  • Independent Living Services: Support for a young person in living on his or her own and in getting a job. These services can include therapeutic group care or supervised apartment living. Services teach youth how to handle financial, medical, housing, transportation, and other daily living needs, as well as how to get along with others.
  • Individualized Education Program (IEP):  A written special education plan that describes a student's individual needs and the special education services that will be provided. 
  • Individualized Service Plans (ISP): The written procedures and activities that are appropriately scheduled and used to deliver services, treatments, and supports to a child and the child's family. Families help create these plans which guide the work of the care manager. The ISP is created uniquely for each child and family and changed as often as necessary to reflect changes in the child, the family, and/or their circumstances. Such plans treat the family as a unit and seek to coordinate service efforts across all family members.
  • Individualized Services: Designed to meet the unique needs of each child and family member. Services are individualized when the caregivers pay attention to the child's and family's needs and strengths, ages, and stages of development.
  • Initial Referral or Intake: This is the process an agency or program uses to first find out about your child and family and determine your eligibility for services. 
  • Inpatient Hospitalization: Mental health treatment in a hospital setting 24 hours a day. The purpose of inpatient hospitalization is: (1) short-term treatment in cases where a child is in crisis and possibly a danger to self or others, and (2) diagnosis and treatment when the patient cannot be evaluated or treated appropriately in an outpatient setting.
  • Intensive Care Management: Intensive community services for individuals with severe and persistent mental illness designed to improve planning for their service needs. Intensive care management includes outreach, evaluation and support services. Case managers are generally advocates and arrangers of services and supports, but also provide teaching of community-living and problem-solving skills; modeling productive behaviors and helping individuals help themselves.
  • Juvenile Justice: An area of law that applies to children who have not reached the legal age of adulthood/maturity, normally eighteen years of age. The goal of juvenile justice is rehabilitation, not punishment. Also refers to the service sector that is responsible for serving children judged to have committed unlawful acts.
  • Juvenile Justice Counselor: Juvenile Counselors provide custody, supervision, direct care, and counseling to juveniles.  Responsibilities include teaching socially desired habits and behaviors, provide recreational activities, and assist with crisis intervention programs.  
  • Level of Care Criteria: Guidelines employed to assist in the determination of the appropriate setting and intensity of behavioral health treatment. 
  • Licensed Clinical Social Worker: A social worker who helps individuals deal with a variety of mental health and daily living problems to improve overall functioning. A social worker usually has a master's degree in social work and has studied sociology, growth and development, mental health theory and practice, human behavior/social environment, psychology, research methods.
  • Linguistic Competence: The capacity of an organization and its personnel to communicate effectively and convey information in a manner that is easily understood by diverse audiences including persons of limited English proficiency, those who have low literacy skills or are not literate, and individuals with disabilities. The organization must have policy, structures, practices, procedures and dedicated resources to support this capacity. This should also include the use of bilingual staff, interpretation services, assistive technology, etc. 
  • Managed Care Organization: An organization that either directly provides or arranges managed health care by applying various strategies designed to optimize the value of provided services by controlling their cost and utilization, promoting their quality and measuring performance to ensure cost-effective outcomes.
  • Management Information System (MIS): A system (almost universally automated or computer based), which collects the necessary information in proper form and at appropriate intervals for managing a program or other activities. The system shall afford indicators, which measure program progress toward objectives, identify discrete costs, and facilitate identifying problems that need attention.
  • Medicaid: A federal program administered by states that is intended to provide funding for health care and health-related services to low-income individuals or other special groups.  
  • Medicaid Options: Options granted by the federal government to states through which they can provide an expanded range of services to a target group of children. 
  • Medical Necessity Criteria: Criteria used by the managed care entity to determine if requested interventions or services are medically appropriate and necessary to meet the needs for a particular individual.
  • Mental Health: Mental health refers to how a person thinks, feels, and acts when faced with life's situations. It is how people look at themselves, their lives, and the other people in their lives; evaluate the challenges and the problems; and explore choices. This includes handling stress, relating to other people, and making decisions.
  • Mental Health Problems: Mental health problems are real. These problems affect one's thoughts, body, feelings, and behavior. They can be severe. They can seriously interfere with a person's life. They're not just a passing phase. They can cause a person to become disabled. Some of these disorders are known as depression, bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, schizophrenia and conduct disorder.
  • Motivational readiness: The perceived need for improvement or pressure for change.
  • Multisystemic Therapy: An intensive family- and community-based evidence-based treatment for youths with antisocial behaviors.
  • Needs Assessment: Systematic approach for gathering data on the needs of a population to be served.
  • Organizational Readiness Assessment: Assesses key characteristics that are necessary for implementing an evidence-based practice with new requirements for training, supervision, and measuring fidelity and outcomes.
  • Outcome-Driven Framework: A guiding set of principles that individuals who are offering mental health services follow when making decisions about treatment. The focus is on the outcomes that need to be achieved.
  • Outcomes: The results of a specific mental health care service, usually phrased in terms of child and family gains (e.g., improved school performance, improved family communication).
  • Outpatient: Office-based treatment provided in the community. This can include diagnosis, assessment, and family and individual counseling.
  • Parent Advocate: These are individuals who have been trained to help other families get the kinds of services and supports they need and want. Parent advocates are usually family members who have raised a child with a behavioral or emotional problem and have worked with the system of care and many of the agencies and providers in your community.
  • Part C: The Early Intervention Program of the Individuals with Disability in Education Act (IDEA) that focuses on infants and toddlers and requires a range of early intervention services needed as a result of developmental delays affecting cognitive development, physical development, language and speech, or psychological development.
  • Performance-Based or Outcomes-Based Contracts: Emphasizes that all aspects of an acquisition be structured around the purpose of the work to be performed as opposed to the manner in which the work is to be performed or broad, imprecise statements of work which preclude an objective assessment of contractor performance. It is designed to ensure that contractors are given freedom to determine how to meet performance objectives, that appropriate performance quality levels are achieved, and that payment is made only for services that meet these levels.
  • Pooled Funding: See definition for Blended Funding.
  • Practice Based Evidence: A range of treatment approaches and supports that are derived from, and supportive of, the positive cultural attributes of the local society and traditions. Practice based evidence services are known to be effective by the local community, through community consensus. They address the therapeutic and healing needs of individuals and families from a culturally specific framework. Practitioners of practice based evidence models draw upon cultural knowledge and traditions for the treatment and are respectfully responsive to the local definition of wellness and dysfunction.
  • Practice Based Evidence/Promising Practices: Practice knowledge supported by evidence of effectiveness through the experiences of key stakeholders, such as families and direct-care providers and usually outcome data.
  • Provider Network: Group of agencies and/or individual providers that agree to provide and are reimbursed for services to members of a managed care plan or an organized system of care.
  • Person-Centered Care: The recipient of care is the driving force behind making decisions about their treatment.
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A psychiatric illness that can occur following a traumatic event in which there was threat of injury or death to you or someone else.
  • Practice-Based Evidence: A range of treatment approaches and supports that are derived from, and supportive of, the positive cultural of the local society and traditions.
  • Practitioner: Anyone who provides direct services for children or their families.  A practitioner may be a licensed independently practicing clinician, a supervised clinical staff member, a certified direct service provider, a person who is trained and meets the criteria to provide direct services or a peer helper.
  • Professional Counselor: A person with an advanced degree in mental health or other social services charged with assessment and treatment.
  • Prognosis: Prediction by a health professional regarding a person's diagnosed condition and chances for recovery.
  • Promising Practices: Clinical practices for which there is considerable evidence or expert consensus and which show promise in improving client outcomes, but which are not yet proven by the highest or strongest scientific evidence.  
  • Psych Under 21: An optional benefit under section 05(a)(6) of the Social Security Act that covers inpatient hospitalization of children under age 21. The benefit must provide any services listed in section 05(a) that is needed to correct or ameliorate defects and physical and mental conditions discovered by EPSDT screening, whether or not the service is covered under the State plan.
  • Psychiatric Rehabilitation Options (Rehabilitation Option): An option in Medicaid services that incorporates rehabilitative, community-based services to persons with psychiatric and co-occurring psychiatric-substance abuse diagnosis. This category is known as the Medicaid Rehabilitation Option or MRO. Medicaid also pays for behavioral health services through the Clinic Option and through Targeted Case Management (TCM).   
  • Psychiatrist: A professional who completed both medical school and training in psychiatry and is a specialist in diagnosing and treating mental illness
  • Psychological Evaluation:  An evaluation that tests a child's intelligence, aptitudes and abilities, social skills, emotional development, and thinking skills.  Psychologist: A professional with a doctoral degree in psychology who specializes in assessment and therapy.
  • Psychopharmacology: The practice of using medicine to treat individuals with psychological and psychiatric conditions through the use of medications.  
  • Psychotherapist: An individual with an advanced degree in social services charged with assessment and treatment (see professional counselor)
  • Purchasing Collaborative: A collaborative behavioral health services model that brings all agencies tasked with the delivery, funding or oversight of behavioral healthcare services together to create a single behavioral health service delivery system in a state.
  • Quality Assurance: An approach to improving the quality and appropriateness of medical care and other services. Includes a formal set of activities to review, assess, and monitor care to ensure that identified problems are addressed.
  • Quality Improvement/Continuous Quality Improvement: A process that continually monitors program performance. When a quality problem is identified, CQI develops a revised approach to that problem and monitors implementation and success of the revised approach. The process includes involvement at all stages by all organizations, and stake holders that are affected by the problem and/or involved in implementing the revised approach.
  • Reimbursement: Refunds for out-of-pocket expenses by an individual or company.
  • Release Form:  A consent form signed by a parent, guardian, or the court, allowing treatment, testing, or release of information. 
  • Residential Services: Treatment in a setting that provides educational instruction and 24-hour care for youth who require continuous supervision and care.
  • Residential Treatment Centers: Facilities that provide treatment 24 hours a day and can usually serve more than 12 young people at a time. Children with serious emotional disturbances receive constant supervision and care. Treatment may include individual, group, and family therapy; behavior therapy; special education; recreation therapy; and medical services. Residential treatment is usually more long-term than inpatient hospitalization. Centers are also known as therapeutic group homes.
  • Resiliency: The quality that allows an individual or group to function well despite the odds against them. Two fundamental concepts are associated with resiliency: risk and protective factors. Mental health promotion concepts focus on minimizing the impact of risk factors (such as stressful life events) and enhancing the protective factors such as social support that increase people's ability to deal with life's challenges.  
  • Respite Care: This is a service that gives a family a short break-relief-where someone else temporarily takes care of your child for a few hours or a few days. Respite care can be provided in your home, at the respite care provider's home, or at a special respite care facility.  
  • School psychologist: An individual with an advanced degree in psychology who assesses children for the presence of learning problems, as well as emotional problems, diagnoses, and treats children in the school system. Roles of school psychologists will vary by location.
  • Scientific Evidence: Results from a study or research project that has a rigorous controlled design (including a clearly articulated hypothesis and rigorous methodology along with controlled conditions and random assignments to various comparison conditions) that includes sufficient subjects to overcome the possibility that the result could have occurred by chance, and is repeated with the same result in multiple sites with different researchers and different experimental and control groups.  
  • Screening: A guideline that recommends periodic interventions be performed for the early detection of behavioral health problems so that appropriate care can be provided early on as well as a preliminary assessment.
  • Screening instruments:  Typically a brief measure to determine a client's level of need for treatment.  
  • Serious Emotional Disturbance: Diagnosable disorders in children and adolescents that severely disrupt daily functioning in the home, school, or community. Some of these disorders are depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity, anxiety, conduct, and eating disorders. Serious emotional disturbances affect 1 in 20 young people.
  • Service Plan: This is a written document that lists and describes all the services and supports your child and family will receive. Typically, service plans also include information about your child's and family's strengths, problems, and needs. Good service plans also spell out what the services and supports are designed to accomplish as well as how and when progress will be assessed. If your child is receiving special education, the service plan is called an Individualized Education Program or IEP. A federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (usually called the IDEA), describes who is eligible for special education and exactly what must be in an IEP.
  • Service Planning Team: This is the group of individuals parents select to help develop a child's service plan. Parents or caregivers choose the family members, professionals, friends, experts, and support people who will be team members. The team meets when it is convenient and as often as necessary to make sure the child and family are getting the help they want and need.
  • Service provider organizations: Mental health or other social service agencies that offer treatment or other services to children and families. 
  • Service system: Refers to multiple agencies in different sectors (mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice, substance abuse, education, and healthcare) that provide services and treatments for the varying needs of children and families.
  • Service Utilization: A description, usually statistical, of the level, frequency, and necessity of services actually used by consumers. Generally aggregated into population measures, rather than individual consumer measures.
  • Social health: Social health refers to how well you get along with others.  When you are socially healthy, you have loving relationships, respect the rights of others, and give and accept help.  Building healthy relationships with family members, making and keeping friends, and communicating your needs to others are all important for social health.   
  • Social Worker:  A mental health professional trained to provide services to individuals, families, or groups.
  • Stakeholders: Those people who are interested, involved, and invested in the project or initiative in some way. In mental health, groups of people who might be identified as stakeholders may be: children and families, family organizations, advocates, community groups, funders, mental health and social service providers, or university or college-based research teams.   
  • State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP): Under Title XXI of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the availability of health insurance for children with no insurance or for children from low-income families was expanded by the creation of SCHIP. SCHIPs operate as part of a State's Medicaid program.
  • Support Services:  May include transportation, financial help, support groups, recreation, respite services, and other services to children and families.
  • System/Site: Any state, tribe, territory, region, county, city, community, or organization that is designing a comprehensive financing strategy to build a system of care.
  • System of Care: A system of care is a method of addressing children's mental health needs. It is developed on the premise that the mental health needs of children, adolescents, and their families can be met within their home, school, and community environments. These systems are also developed around the principles of being family-driven, youth-guided, strength-based, and culturally competent; and involving interagency collaboration.  This a coordinated network of agencies and providers that make a full range of mental health and other necessary services available as needed by children with mental health problems and their families.
  • Targeted Case Management: Medicaid term for case management services covered under Title XIXX of the Social Security Act. Federal law defines Targeted Case Management as services that will assist individuals eligible under the state Medicaid plan in gaining access to needed medical, social, educational and other services. 
  • Title IV-E Demonstration Waiver (Child Welfare Demonstration Projects): Provides States with an opportunity to design and test a wide range of cost-neutral approaches to improve and reform child welfare by waiving certain requirements of Title IV-E. The general objectives of the waivers include the development of family-focused, strengths-based, community-based service delivery networks that enhance the child-rearing abilities of families, to enable them to remain safely together when possible, or to move children quickly to permanency; and development of better results for children and families.   
  • Therapeutic Foster Care:  A home with trained foster parents where a youth with emotional disturbance lives and has access to other support services.
  • Therapeutic Group Homes:  Community-based, home-like settings providing intensive treatment services, with 24-hour supervision. Services offered in this setting try both to avoid inpatient hospitalization and to move the youth to a less restrictive living situation.
  • Transition:  The process of moving from one setting to another. Also can mean moving from one activity to another, such as evening to bedtime.
  • Transitional Services: Services that help children leave the system that provides help for children and move into adulthood and the adult service system. Help includes mental health care, independent living services, supported housing, vocational services, and a range of other support services. 
  • Utilization Management: A system of procedures designed to ensure that the services provided to a specific individual at a given time are cost-effective, appropriate, and least restrictive.
  • Utilization Review: Retrospective analysis of the patterns of service usage in order to determine means for optimizing the value of services provided (e.g. minimize cost and maximize effectiveness/appropriateness).
  • Wraparound Services: a collaborative team-based approach to offering services for children with emotional and behavioral problems and their families. Team members, who are identified by the child and family and other service providers meet regularly to design, implement, and monitor their individualized treatment plans.  Also defined as being a "full-service" approach to developing help that meets the mental health needs of individual children and their families. Children and families may need a range of community support services to fully benefit from traditional mental health services such as family therapy and special education. Support services are often unique, and address specific sources of stress.
  • Youth guided: Youth are experts and considered equal partners in creating system change at the individual, state, and national level.

References: 

Westchester Community Network. (2005). Alphabet Soup.Retrieved October 23, 2006, from Westchester Alphabet Soup 

SAMHSA's NationalMentalHealthInformationCenter: Center for Mental Health Services. (n.d.) Mental Health Dictionary. Retrieved October 23, 2006 from http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/resources/dictionary.aspx

3. English-Test.net. (n.d.) Definition of Attribute. Retrieved October 23, 2006 from http://www.english-test.net/toefl/vocabulary/words/009/toefl-definitions.php

Online Therapy, Counselling & Mental Health Resources. (n.d.). Glossary of terms commonly used in mental health. Retrieved October 23, 2006 from http://www.counsellingresource.com/types/glossary/c.html.

5. Hyde, P.S., Falls, K.., Morris, J.A., Schoenwald, S.K., (2001). Turning knowledge into practice: a manual for behavioral health administrators and practitioners about understanding and implementing evidence-based practices. Boston: Technical Assistance Collaborative.

6. Mental Health Promotion Toolkit: A practical resource for community initiatives. (n.d.) Glossary of terms. Retrieved October 23, 2006 from http://www.cmha.ca/mh_toolkit/intro/glossary.htm.

 CAFAS. (n.d.) CAFAS. Retrieved October 23, 2006 from http://www.cafas.com/<