Addictions
This term describes the physical or emotional distress someone experiences when they stop using an addictive substance.
Withdrawal
What is withdrawal?
This disorder develops after exposure to a traumatic event and includes symptoms such as flashbacks, avoidance, and hyperarousal.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
This term describes the transmission of historical trauma from one generation to the next, often affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Intergenerational trauma
What is intergenerational trauma?
This disorder is characterised by persistent sadness, loss of interest, changes in sleep or appetite, and difficulty functioning daily.
Depression
What is depression?
This is the process of listening, understanding, and guiding someone to explore their thoughts and feelings to improve well-being.
Counselling
What is counselling?
This occurs when someone uses alcohol or drugs in a way that causes harm to themselves or others.
Substance abuse
What is substance abuse?
This condition occurs when a person experiences emotional or behavioural symptoms within three months of a stressful event but doesn’t meet criteria for PTSD.
Adjustment Disorder
What is Adjustment Disorder?
Policies like the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families between 1910–1970 are collectively known as this.
Stolen Generations
What is the Stolen Generations?
People with this anxiety disorder experience sudden, intense episodes of fear accompanied by physical symptoms like heart palpitations, sweating, and shortness of breath.
Panic disorder
What is a panic disorder?
This process assesses desire to carry out a suicide, access to means of suicide and specific plans, if any, for committing suicide.
Suicide risk assessment
What is a Suicide risk assessment?
This “feel-good” neurotransmitter plays a key role in the brain’s reward system and reinforces addictive behaviours.
Dopamine
What is dopamine?
Evidence-based therapy for trauma often involves talking through the traumatic event, challenging unhelpful thoughts, and gradually facing trauma-related memories or situations. Common approaches include CBT, EMDR, and exposure therapy.
Trauma-focused therapies
What are trauma-focused therapies?
Harmful, aggressive, or bullying behavior that occurs between peers or colleagues within the same group or community, rather than from an external source or authority.
Lateral violence
What is lateral violence?
This disorder is marked by alternating periods of elevated mood and depression, affecting energy, sleep, and activity levels.
Bipolar disorder
What is bipolar disorder?
This type of therapy focuses on identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns to influence emotions and behavior.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
What is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)?
Unlike abstinence-based models, this compassionate approach focuses on reducing the negative impacts of substance use without requiring total cessation.
Harm minimisation (or harm reduction)
What is harm minimisation (or harm reduction)?
Unlike PTSD, this related disorder involves symptoms of depersonalisation and derealisation following trauma, usually lasting less than one month.
Acute Stress Disorder
What is Acute Stress Disorder?
Shared trauma that damages the bonds and social fabric of a community.
Collective trauma
What is collective trauma?
This group of disorders involves excessive fear, worry, or nervousness, and includes conditions such as generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder.
Anxiety disorders
What are anxiety disorders?
An approach that integrates physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and environmental factors to promote overall wellbeing and support recovery for mental health disorders.
Wholistic approach
What is a wholistic approach to people helping?
This concept explains why people often continue addictive behaviours even when they cause harm—it serves as a temporary escape from emotional pain or distress.
Addiction as a maladaptive coping strategy
What is addiction as a maladaptive coping strategy?
This term refers to repetitive, indirect trauma experienced by professionals exposed to others’ traumatic experiences, commonly seen in therapists or first responders.
Secondary Traumatic Stress (or Vicarious Trauma)
What is Secondary Traumatic Stress (or Vicarious Trauma)?
This factor, including systemic racism, social disadvantage, and ongoing marginalisation, can reinforce the effects of intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities.
Social determinants of health
What are social determinants of health?
Disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder are classified under this category, often involving preoccupation with food, weight, or body shape.
Eating disorders
What are eating disorders?
The theory that mental illness develops through the interaction between an individual's underlying vulnerability, and stressful life experiences. The greater the vulnerability, the less stress may be required to trigger symptoms.
Wholistic approach
What is a stress-diathesis theory?