Glossary – Therapy Related Terms

Mental Status Exam: your initial assessment with the clinician, used to determine the impact of mental health symptoms through direct questions and therapist observations. In it, the therapist will evaluate your memory, clarity of thinking, emotional state, risk of harm, and intellectual functioning. This exam can help with diagnosis and treatment planning.

Diagnosis: a label to identify a defined condition. Mental health diagnoses are based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which classifies the specific criteria required to describe each diagnosis.

Treatment Plan: a written plan detailing specific treatment goals. These goals include a description of the symptoms to be improved, the therapist’s methods to address them, and how you’ll measure progress.

Evidence-Based Intervention: refers to any (psychotherapeutic) intervention. Since the body of psychotherapy research has grown over time, it’s gotten easier to assure that a strategy used is valid, proven effective, and specified to suit your needs.

Therapeutic Orientation: the type of therapy or theoretical approach a clinician uses. There are numerous types of therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy, interpersonal therapy, and many more. These approaches are based on different theories about what causes mental health issues and typically include unique, defined treatment strategies. Some types of therapy provide better treatment for certain diagnoses, so it’s good to know if a clinician’s training fits your needs.

Trauma-informed Approach to Mindfulness: works by modifying traditional meditation practices with grounding, anchoring, and self-regulation techniques to maintain balance in the nervous system, which can help traumatized people manage their symptoms and feel safer in their bodies.

Trauma-informed mindfulness can also involve:

• performing a physical activity with present moment awareness rather than sitting still in meditation
• observing objects, colors, or the space around you
• listening attentively to music as a mindful practice

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (ITP): a brief, attachment-focused psychotherapy that centers on resolving interpersonal problems and symptomatic recovery. It is an empirically supported treatment that follows a highly structured and time-limited approach and is intended to be completed within 12–16 weeks.

• There are three phases of interpersonal therapy: Formulation, Middle, and Graduation. Each phase can last three to five sessions depending on the severity of symptoms and the interpersonal distress the client is experiencing.

The Strengths Perspective: is an approach to social work that puts the strengths and resources of people, communities, and their environments, rather than their problems and pathologies, at the center of the helping process.

• The objective of the strengths-based approach is to protect the individual’s independence, resilience, ability to make choices and wellbeing.
• Harm Reduction: range of public health policies designed to lessen the negative social and/or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal

See: harmreduction.org/about-us/principles-of-harm-reduction/ for the 8 principals of Harm Reduction.

Inner Child Work: also referred to as inner child healing, is a way to address our needs that haven’t been met as children and heal the attachment wounds we’ve developed. Involves creating a space where your subconscious is allowed to take the lead.

Narrative Therapy: seeks to help patients identify their values and the skills associated with them. It provides the patient with knowledge of their ability to live these values so they can effectively confront current and future problems.

– Facets of Narrative Therapy: Deconstructing problematic dominant stories.

1) Tracing the history of the problem.

2) Exploring the effects of the problem.

3) Situating the problem in context.

4) Discovering unique outcomes.

Gestalt Therapy: a type of therapeutic approach known for its use of role-playing and confrontation techniques. The goal of Gestalt therapy is to teach people to become aware of significant sensations within themselves and their environment so that they respond fully and reasonably to situations.

Managing and Adapting Practice (MAP): is a powerful collection of resources that organize and coordinate care, focusing on a wide diversity of treatment targets and ages. MAP can help identify and select best fitting evidence-based treatments, but more often it operates more like a treatment design, implementation, and evaluation toolkit. That is, providers, youth, and families can select, build, organize, and implement treatment based on the most up-to-date research evidence and can personalize care by incorporating real-time evidence of practice history and youth outcomes.

Solution-Focused Perspectives (SFBT): is a future-focused, goal-directed approach to therapy that highlights the importance of searching for solutions rather than focusing on problems. This therapy encourages those in treatment to develop a vision of the future and offers support as they determine the skills, resources, and abilities needed to achieve that vision successfully.

Integrative Approach: the idea of integrating or combining aspects of several different schools of thought to promote wellness.

Rational-Cultural Theory (RCT): brings relationships to the forefront of human psychology. It examines the complexity of human relationships, using concepts of connection and disconnection, as well as recognizing and exploring the social implications of psychological theory. The cultural aspect brings into focus the influence of larger culture and power differentials on the quality and nature of relationships and the subsequent effects on healthy coexistence

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): a form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness.

– CBT is based on several core principles, that can be found at the following link:

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral