Glossary
Psychiatric Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential psychiatric technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key psychiatric technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in psychiatric technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ADLs
- Activities of daily living.
- Behavior plan
- A plan for managing behaviors.
- De-escalation
- Calming a tense situation.
- Developmental disability
- A lifelong condition affecting development.
- Elopement
- A patient leaving without permission.
- Incident report
- Documentation of events.
- Milieu
- The therapeutic environment.
- PRN
- As-needed medication.
- Psychosis
- Losing touch with reality.
- Restraint
- Physically limiting movement, used only as a last resort.
- Safety rounds
- Regular checks on patients.
- Seclusion
- Isolating a patient for safety.
- Suicide precautions
- Measures to prevent self-harm.
- Therapeutic communication
- Communication that supports healing.
- Trauma-informed care
- Care that recognizes trauma.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Psychiatric Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Psychiatric Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.