Mental Health Glossary

Written by the Able Psychiatry clinical team

Updated September 27, 2026

The Able Psychiatry mental health glossary explains the terms you meet in psychiatric care, from TMS and medications to insurance, in plain language. Each entry gives the definition first, then the detail, with its sources.

A · B · D · E · M · P · R · S · T

A

• Accelerated TMS: Accelerated TMS delivers several TMS sessions in a single day so a full course finishes in days instead of weeks; SAINT/SNT is the FDA-cleared version of this idea.
• Anhedonia: Anhedonia is a reduced ability to feel pleasure or interest in activities that used to feel rewarding, including reduced drive to seek them out.
• Augmentation therapy: Augmentation therapy is adding a second, non-antidepressant medication to an existing antidepressant that has only partly relieved depression, rather than switching or stopping it.

B

• Board-certified psychiatrist: A physician (MD/DO) who has completed an accredited psychiatry residency and passed the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) certification exam.

D

• Defense mechanisms: Defense mechanisms are largely unconscious mental processes the mind uses to protect itself from anxiety, internal conflict, or distress.
• Drug half-life: Drug half-life is the time it takes for the amount of a medication in the bloodstream to fall by half, and it varies from hours to weeks by drug.

E

• Ego development: Ego development is a theory describing how a person’s framework for making meaning out of experience becomes progressively more complex over the lifespan.

M

• Maintenance TMS: Maintenance TMS is a lower-frequency continuation of TMS sessions after an initial course, meant to sustain the antidepressant response and reduce relapse.
• Major depressive disorder: Major depressive disorder is a diagnosis marked by a depressed mood or loss of interest that lasts most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks and interferes with daily life.
• Medication management: Medication management is the ongoing model of psychiatric care built around follow-up visits, in which a prescriber starts, monitors, and adjusts a psychiatric medication over time.
• Motor threshold: the lowest TMS pulse strength that reliably makes a hand muscle respond, used to set each person’s TMS dose.

P

• Prior authorization: A health plan’s requirement that a clinician get insurer approval before certain medications or medical services are covered, decided before the service is delivered.
• Psychiatric evaluation: A psychiatric evaluation is a structured clinical assessment, built mainly around an interview, that a psychiatrist uses to find out whether a mental disorder is present and build a plan of care.
• Psychiatric intake appointment: A psychiatric intake appointment is a new patient’s first visit at a psychiatric practice, covering scheduling, paperwork, the psychiatric evaluation, and an initial plan of care.
• Psychiatric nurse practitioner: An advanced practice registered nurse with graduate-level psychiatric training, certified through the ANCC’s PMHNP-BC exam, who can evaluate, diagnose, and prescribe for mental health conditions.
• Psychiatric physician assistant: A certified physician assistant (PA-C) who practices in mental health care, evaluating patients and helping manage psychiatric medication under physician collaboration.

R

• Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS): rTMS is a non-invasive treatment that delivers repeated magnetic pulses through a scalp coil to treat depression that hasn’t improved with medication.

S

• Stimulant medication: Stimulant medication is a class of ADHD drugs built on amphetamine or methylphenidate, classified by the DEA as Schedule II controlled substances.

T

• Telepsychiatry: Telepsychiatry is the delivery of psychiatric care, including evaluations, therapy, and medication management, over live video or audio instead of in person.
• Theta burst stimulation: Theta burst stimulation delivers TMS pulses in rapid bursts instead of a steady stream; its intermittent form (iTBS) is the form tested for depression in the THREE-D trial.

Covered in depth in our articles

• SSRIs: how they work in the brain
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): how it works and what it feels like
• Ketamine treatment: what to expect
• Learned helplessness
• Psychiatrist vs. therapist
• Compassionate psychiatry
• Depression, hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome