acute mental health definition
Acute Mental Illness
Acute mental illness is characterised by significant and distressing symptoms of a mental illness requiring immediate treatment. This may be the person's first experience of mental illness, a repeat episode or the worsening of symptoms of an often continuing mental illness. The onset is sudden or rapid and the symptoms usually respond to treatment.
Anxiety Disorders
These disorders were formerly called neuroses. They are characterized by an excessive degree of anxiety, developing in some patients to episodes of panic.
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) Teams
ACT teams are interdisciplinary teams with professional, clinical experience in occupational therapy, psychiatric nursing, psychiatry, social work, therapeutic recreation, and vocational support. ACT teams work in the community assisting clients with severe and persistent mental illness to live independently in the place of their choice and to achieve their personal, educational, and/or vocational goals. There are eleven ACT teams under St. Joseph’s Health Care London in Southwestern Ontario.
Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depressive Illness)
A state characterized by extreme mood swings, depression alternating with manic behaviour.
Delusions
False beliefs not grounded in reality
Depression
Depression is a biological illness affecting brain chemistry, which can lead to a state of morbid and extreme sadness, despair and hopelessness.
Hallucinations
Person senses perceptions that do not exist in the real world.
Homes for Special Care (HSC)
HSC provides supportive care to residents living in 24-hour supervised residential facilities licensed by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
Organic Brain Disorders
They can be psychiatric disorders (a) resulting from brain damage from trauma or disease or (b) a temporary metabolic derangement involving the brain as a whole or part.
Patient Advocate
The Patient Advocate is independent of the hospital and can act on the patient’s behalf when they have concerns about treatment, legal rights, or restrictions of freedom while in hospital.
Personality Disorders
They are deeply ingrained life-long patterns of behaviour, which affect interpersonal relationships and social skills.
