Glossary of Key Terms

• Administrators: Individuals that manage agency functions related to service delivery, training, human resources, financing, management information systems, and quality improvement.
• 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.1
• Assessment: 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.2
• 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.3
• Behavioral healthcare: Continuum of services for individuals at risk of, or suffering from, mental, addictive, or other behavioral health disorders.2
• 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.4
• 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.5
• Biopsychosocial assessment: The evaluation of a person’s biological, psychological, and social factors to develop a comprehensive picture from which to base treatment.
• Case manager: An individual who organizes and coordinates services and supports for children with mental health problems and their families. (Alternate terms: service coordinator, advocate, and facilitator.)2
• 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.6
• 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.7
• Child welfare: Child service sector that focuses on child protection, foster care, and the overall care of children’s health and living conditions.
• 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.4
• 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.4
• 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.6
• 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).8
• 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.2
• 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.22
• 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. 9
• 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.10
• 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.11
• 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.5
• Emotional Health: The well-being and appropriate expressions of one’s emotions.
• Evidence: Refers to data resulting from scientific controlled trials and research, expert or user consensus, evaluation, or anecdotal information.5
• 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. 12
• 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 Practices: Practices that integrate the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values.13
• Externalizing Disorder: Disorders that are expressed overtly and can be characterized by aggression, behavioral acting-out, hyperactivity, and conduct disorder.
• Family-Centered Services: Help designed to meet the specific needs of each individual child and family.2
• 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.14
• 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.
• Hyperactivity: A disorder in which children are overactive and impulsive (acts without thinking).
• Internalizing Disorders: Disorders expressed within the individual and focused on clinically problematic affective and emotional state, such as anxiety or depression.
• 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.15
• 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.16
• Linguistic Competence: 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. This may include the use of bilingual staff, interpretation services, assistive technology, etc.17
• Manualized Treatment Protocols: Approaches to mental health treatment that offer a prescriptive approach through the use of manuals and specialized training. These manuals should be followed as stated.
• 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.
• Mental Health: How people look at themselves, their lives, and the other people in their lives; evaluate their challenges and problems; and explore choices. This includes handling stress, relating to other people, and making decisions.2
• 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).2
• 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.18
• 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.19
• 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.5
• 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.5
• Psychiatrist: A professional who completed both medical school and training in psychiatry and is a specialist in diagnosing and treating mental illness.2
• Psychologist: A professional with a doctoral degree in psychology who specializes in assessment and therapy.2
• 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)
• Reimbursement: Refunds for out-of-pocket expenses by an individual or company.
• 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.6
• 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.5
• Screening instruments:  Typically a brief measure to determine a client’s level of need for treatment.
• 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.
• 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.20
• 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.6
• 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 child-centered, family-driven, strength-based, and culturally competent; and involving interagency collaboration.2
• 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.21
• Youth guided: Youth are experts and considered equal partners in creating system change at the individual, state, and national level.2