Fourth Edition, September 2011

Medical Sedation 
The prescribing and administration of medication that 
has a tranquilising, calming eff ect.
Memory consolidation 
The physical and psychological changes that take 
place as the brain organizes and restructures informa-
tion that may become a permanent part of memory. 

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Making a Diff erence: An Educators’ Guide to Child and Youth Mental Health Problems
www.cymhin.ca
3 . 8
Glossary of terms and abbreviations
Mental Health
Describes the capacity of an individual to interact with 
other people and with his or her environment in ways 
that promote the person’s sense of well-being, en-
hance his or her personal development, and allow the 
person to achieve his or her life goals.
Mental Health Professional 
Staff of mental health services with professional training 
and qualifi cations, and experience in working with clients 
who have a mental illness. Mental health profession-
als include: social workers, psychiatric nurses, child and 
youth workers, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, and 
psychologists.
Mental Illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological 
or behavioural pattern generally associated with sub-
jective distress or disability that occurs in an individ-
ual, and which is not a part of normal development or 
culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination 
of aff ective, behavioural, cognitive, and perceptual 
components.
Mental retardation 
See Intellectual Disability
Middle insomnia
Awakening in the middle of the night followed by 
eventually falling back to sleep, but with diffi
culty.
Mood
A mood is a relatively long-lasting emotional state. 
Moods diff er from emotions in that they are less 
specifi c, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by 
a particular stimulus or event. Common examples of 
mood include: depression, elation, anger, and anxiety. 
In contrast to aff ect, which refers to more fl uctuating 
changes in emotional “weather,” mood refers to a more 
pervasive and sustained emotional “climate.” Types of 
mood include: dysphoric, elevated, euthymic, expan-
sive, irritable. 
Mood Disorder
Mood disorder is the term designating a group of 
diagnoses where a disturbance in the person’s mood 
is hypothesized to be the main underlying feature. 
Two groups of mood disorders are broadly recog-
nized: there are depressive disorders, of which the best 
known and most researched is major depressive dis-
order (MDD), commonly called clinical depression or 
major depression, and bipolar disorder (BD), formerly 
known as manic depression, and characterized by 
intermittent episodes of mania or hypomania, usually 
interlaced with depressive episodes.