Here you’ll find some common jargon used in mental health settings. Needs lots of help to make it useful, so please send your jargon & definitions in. Where there’s a piece of jargon but no definition yet, you’re welcome to send in a definition.
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Approved mental health professional (AMHP) – A mental health practitioner who has been trained to perform a pivotal role in assessing and deciding whether there are grounds to detain without their consent a person who is experiencing mental health problems.
Care programme approach …
Clinical psychologist …
Cognitive behavioural therapy …
Forensic: related to crime, criminal investgations and criminals
Mental Capacity Act – Primarily concerned with providing a legal framework for acting and making decisions on behalf of adults who lack the ability to make a particular decision for themselves.
Mental Health Act – Primarily concerned with providing a legal framework to allow people to be detained in hospital against their will for assessment and treatment of mental health problems (also known as sectioning).
Nearest relative – A close relative who the AMHP has identified from a heirarchy defined in the Mental Health Act. the nearest relative has the right to request an assessment for their relative to be detained in hospital and apply for their relative to be discharged from a section which has been obtained.
Patient / service user / client / consumer – here’s an essay by GP Jonathon Tomlinson (@mellojonny) on the use of these terms
PRN medication – Medication which is given when needed or when a specific situation arises.
Psychiatry – The medical speciality focussed on the assessment and treatment of mental disorder.
Responsible clinician (RC) – The approved clincian with overall responsibility for the service user’s care.
Sectioning – Unofficial term for use of the Mental Health Act to detain a person in hospital against their will.
Stigma – The definition I find helpful is “negative assumptions”; and I describe discrimination as acting on those negative assumptions.
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Sectioned 
CATT – Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team – provides 24/7 assessment and short-term treatment services for people experiencing a serious mental health crisis and for whom there are urgent safety issues. They may be the team temporarily in charge of a persons care after acute discharge or they may care for someone in the community as an alternative to inpatient care if the risk can be managed safely.
Thanks, that’s really helpful 🙂
Advanced Directive – a document where you can state your preferred treatment in the event that you become unwell and are not deemed capable of making decisions. Preferred treatment can include, medications you do or do not want and wards you would prefer or not prefer to be placed for safety in the event of inpatient care.
Another helpful comment – thanks! 🙂
Helpful way to remember the difference behind the main sections used in the MHA:
D – Definition of the Act (Section 1)
A – Assessment (being detained for up to 28 days; non-renewable) – Section 2
T – Treatment (being detained up to 6 months; renewable section) – Section 3
E – Emergency (detainment of up to 72 hours; similar to section 2 except just one medical opinion is required) – Section 4
D – Detainment (used to detain an informal/voluntary patient who is attempting to leave and there are concerns about their immediate mental state and safety) – Section 5(2) (doctor’s holding power for up to 72 hours) and Section 5(4) (nurse’s holding power for up to 6 hours).
Thanks for your helpful comment & for sharing some of the wisdom from your nursing course 🙂
This is quite useful and amusing…
Click to access PsychobabbleFeb2012.pdf
Service User – I hate this term and parodied it in my novel. It makes us sound like we’re in mental health services in order to somehow consume some better health. It’s so cold and transactional, a really Orwellian abuse of language. What’s wrong with ‘patient’? It simply comes from the Latin for ‘suffering’ – I think everyone can agree that all who find themselves in MH services are most certainly suffering.
CPN – community psychiatric nurse
‘take it to the MDT’
When my son was sectioned and he had an issue whilst on the ward, nurses or mental health support workers wouldn’t answer straight away and instead say ‘take it to the MDt’ (multi disciplinary team meetings).
When I had an issue with something that had happened on the ward they would say, we’ll take it to the MDT! Just another way to delay an answer.
Care plan
PCT primary care trust
Section 17 leave
Section 117 aftercare
Key nurse
Script
Meds
psych
You’ll lose your leave
PICU ward intensive care unit
CBU ward challenging behaviour unit
Your son is on 5 minute obs
Intravenous haloperidol
I could go on!