Fourth Edition, September 2011

Tactile hallucination
A hallucination involving the perception of being 
touched or of something being under one’s skin. The 
most common tactile hallucinations are the sensation 
of electric shocks and formication (the sensation of 
something creeping or crawling on or under the skin).
Temperament
An individual’s constitutional predisposition to react in 
a particular way to stimuli. 
Tic
An involuntary, sudden, rapid, recurrent, nonrhythmic, 
stereotyped motor movement or vocalization.
Thought Disorder
A symptom most often seen in schizophrenia and 
other psychoses. It describes a disturbance in a per-
son’s thought patterns and is usually shown in abnor-
mal speech. For example, a person may jump from 
topic to topic in conversation, their answers may be 
quite unrelated to a question or they may use strik-
ingly unusual words or phrases.
Treatment
The use of professional knowledge and skill to bring 
about an improvement in a person’s mental illness or 
to lessen the ill eff ects of a mental illness, and the dis-
tress end suff ering that may accompany it.
Trichotillomania
The pulling out of one’s own hair to the point that 
it is noticeable and causing signifi cant distress or 
impairment.
Visual hallucination
A hallucination involving sight, which may consist 
of formed images, such as of people, or of unformed 
images, such as fl ashes of light. Visual hallucinations 
should be distinguished from illusions, which are mis-
perceptions of real external stimuli.
Voluntary Admission
A voluntary patient who consents to treatment from a 
psychiatric inpatient service and is accepted for treat-
ment with the approval of the authorised psychiatrist 
or other health care professional.
Developed with thanks to:
www.wikipedia.org/ 
www.abess.com/glossary.html
www.health.vic.gov.au/mentalhealth/termnlgy.htm

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Making a Diff erence: An Educators’ Guide to Child and Youth Mental Health Problems
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