Do you have a work voice? Or jargon/ vocab that is associated with your work? I had this conversation with a friend who also works in mental health and I caught him using some vocab that came from his work in normal conversation.

I wrote some time ago about the word ‘insight’. That’s just one of many words we commonly use in mental health which might be part of a person’s normal vocab. Some others include… mood, risk, safety, soothing, de-escalation, prompting, intrusive, isolative, compliant… They reflect what is considered important in our culture to one’s mental health.

There has been lots written about social construction and language, which I won’t go into. But it makes me wonder what sort of language was used in years past when it came to mental health? I know that we have moved from using the term ‘Psychiatric Unit’ to ‘Mental Health Unit’. What else? Does anyone know? What about what words are we moving towards using?