BCPP key terms

A structured clinical assessment covering appearance, behavior, mood, affect, thought process and content, perception, cognition, insight, and judgment. It establishes a psychiatric baseline and tracks change over time, including response to medication.

A nine-item self-report scale that rates how often depressive symptoms occurred over the past two weeks, producing a total from 0 to 27 used to screen for, grade, and monitor depression.

A seven-item self-report questionnaire scoring anxiety symptoms over the past two weeks from 0 to 21. Higher totals indicate greater severity, and a score of 10 or more suggests probable generalized anxiety disorder.

A structured interview that rates suicidal ideation and behavior from passive wishes to completed attempts, helping clinicians stratify risk and document it consistently across visits and settings.

A clinician-rated scale scoring orofacial, limb, and truncal movements to detect tardive dyskinesia and other drug-induced movement disorders in patients receiving dopamine-blocking medications.

An eleven-item clinician-rated instrument grading manic symptoms such as elevated mood, irritability, speech, and insight; the total score quantifies mania severity and tracks response to treatment.

A ten-item scale quantifying alcohol withdrawal severity, including tremor, sweating, agitation, and hallucinations. Scores guide symptom-triggered benzodiazepine dosing during medically supervised detoxification.

An eleven-item clinician-rated scale measuring opioid withdrawal signs and symptoms. The total confirms that withdrawal is present and helps time induction onto buprenorphine.

A drug class that blocks presynaptic serotonin reuptake and raises synaptic serotonin. These agents are first-line for major depression and many anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and trauma-related disorders.

A mood stabilizer with a narrow therapeutic range, usually 0.6 to 1.2 mEq/L. It requires periodic serum levels plus renal, thyroid, and calcium monitoring, and its levels shift with sodium and fluid changes.

A slow, fixed-step dose escalation over weeks when starting lamotrigine. Faster titration and concurrent valproate markedly increase the risk of serious rash, including Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis.

A class that inhibits monoamine oxidase and raises brain norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. Use requires dietary tyramine restriction and avoidance of serotonergic or sympathomimetic combinations to prevent hypertensive crisis and serotonin toxicity.

Sustained treatment with methadone or buprenorphine that reduces craving and withdrawal, blunts opioid euphoria, and lowers mortality in opioid use disorder. Dosing is titrated and often continued long term.

An opioid antagonist given orally or as a long-acting injection. It reduces heavy drinking in alcohol use disorder and blocks opioid effects, so patients must be opioid-free before starting to avoid precipitated withdrawal.

An alcohol-aversive medication that inhibits aldehyde dehydrogenase, so any alcohol exposure causes acetaldehyde buildup with flushing, nausea, and tachycardia. Effectiveness depends heavily on supervised adherence and patient commitment.

A planned, gradual dose reduction, often about 5 to 10 percent every two to four weeks, used to stop long-term benzodiazepines while limiting rebound anxiety, insomnia, and withdrawal seizures.

A depot formulation injected every two to twelve weeks that gives steady plasma levels, removes the burden of daily oral dosing, and is often chosen when nonadherence drives repeated relapse.

Depression that has not responded adequately to at least two different antidepressants given at therapeutic dose for adequate duration. Management includes augmentation, esketamine, and neuromodulation strategies.

A drug class including valbenazine and deutetrabenazine that reduces vesicular packaging of dopamine, lowering presynaptic dopamine release. These agents treat tardive dyskinesia and chorea associated with Huntington disease.

A potentially fatal toxidrome of altered mental status, autonomic hyperactivity, and neuromuscular hyperactivity such as clonus and hyperreflexia. It is caused by serotonergic agents alone or, more often, in combination.

A rare idiosyncratic reaction to dopamine antagonists marked by rigidity, hyperthermia, altered consciousness, and autonomic instability with elevated creatine kinase. It requires immediate drug withdrawal and supportive care.

A mandatory FDA safety program requiring prescriber, pharmacy, and patient enrollment plus scheduled absolute neutrophil count reporting, so clozapine can be withheld or stopped when severe neutropenia develops.

A late-onset, potentially irreversible movement disorder of involuntary choreoathetoid movements, most often of the face and tongue, appearing after months to years of dopamine-receptor blockade.

The heart-rate-corrected QT interval measured on an electrocardiogram. Marked prolongation, often above 500 milliseconds, raises the risk of torsades de pointes and prompts caution with many antipsychotics and antidepressants.

A process where a drug increases activity of metabolizing enzymes, lowering concentrations of coadministered substrates. Effect builds over days to weeks and can cause loss of efficacy when an inducer is added.

Scheduled measurement of weight, waist circumference, blood pressure, fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1c, and lipids during antipsychotic therapy, because weight gain, dyslipidemia, and hyperglycemia raise cardiovascular risk.

Measuring plasma drug concentration to individualize dosing for agents with narrow therapeutic ranges, such as lithium, valproate, and clozapine, interpreting results against sampling time and clinical status.

A dilutional low serum sodium caused by excess antidiuretic hormone, sometimes drug-induced by SSRIs or carbamazepine. It presents with confusion, falls, or seizures and requires fluid restriction or a therapy change.

A severe abrupt rise in blood pressure, sometimes triggered by tyramine-rich food or sympathomimetic drugs during MAOI therapy. It presents with occipital headache, sweating, and palpitations and is a medical emergency.

A client-centered counseling style using open questions, reflective listening, and affirmation to strengthen the person's own reasons for change while avoiding confrontation, persuasion, and premature advice-giving.

The extent to which a person takes medication as agreed with the prescriber. It is shaped by beliefs, side effects, cost, regimen complexity, and access, and is assessed through open questioning and refill data.

A communication technique in which the patient restates in their own words how to take a medicine or what to do next, exposing misunderstandings that the clinician can then correct on the spot.

The systematic, supervised reduction or discontinuation of medications that no longer help or are causing harm, done collaboratively with the patient and with monitoring for withdrawal effects or symptom recurrence.

A written protocol between a pharmacist and a prescriber authorizing the pharmacist to initiate, adjust, or stop specified medications and order relevant laboratory tests under defined conditions.

A public health framework meaning screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment. It identifies risky substance use in general settings and responds proportionately with brief counseling or specialty referral.

A pharmacist service involving comprehensive medication review, identification of drug-related problems, and a collaborative care plan shared with the patient and prescriber, often reimbursed under Medicare Part D.

The number of patients who must receive an intervention for one additional favorable outcome. It is the reciprocal of the absolute risk reduction and expresses clinical impact in intuitive terms.

An analysis that keeps every randomized participant in their assigned group regardless of adherence or dropout. It preserves randomization and generally yields a conservative estimate of real-world effectiveness.

A range around a study estimate that, with a stated probability such as 95 percent, is expected to contain the true population value. Its width reflects precision and whether it crosses the null value.

A statistical pooling of results from multiple comparable studies to produce one summary estimate with greater precision, ideally after assessing heterogeneity and publication bias.