Welcome to the Hurdle Glossary, a list of culturally intentional mental healthcare definitions to guide you throughout the Hurdle experience.
appointment: the time scheduled for a Hurdle member to meet with a Hurdle therapist; appropriate alternatives are session, therapy.
athenaNet: Hurdle's electronic medical record (EMR), practice management system (PM), and telehealth platform to service patients.
bias: a perception, attitude, emotion, belief, or idea that limits the therapist's capacity to relate to their client as a whole, or that creates a tendency to marginalize aspects of that person's experience.
BIPOC: acronym upon the first reference is fine; no need to spell out; use when referring to the predominant racial makeup of Hurdle’s target client-audience; often used in conjunction with LBGTQ2+ to highlight the intersectionalities of Hurdle’s therapy.
Black: always capitalize.
B2B: business-to-business; the process/model Hurdle uses to sell enterprise solutions (products, services) to employers and payers (as opposed to B2C; see B2C).
B2C: business-to-consumer; the process/model Hurdle uses to sell its products and services directly between a business and its consumers who are the end-users of its products or services (as opposed to B2B; see B2B).
cultural humility: always use in place of cultural competence. Cultural competence bears two main problems: It suggests that there is categorical knowledge a person could attain about a group of people, which leads to stereotyping and bias, and it denotes that there is an endpoint to becoming fully culturally competent. Cultural humility was introduced in 1998 as a dynamic and lifelong process focusing on self-reflection and personal critique, acknowledging one’s own biases. It recognizes the shifting nature of intersecting identities and encourages ongoing curiosity rather than an endpoint. Cultural humility involves understanding the complexity of identities — that even in sameness there is difference — and that a clinician will never be fully competent about the evolving and dynamic nature of a patient's experiences.
culturally intentional: descriptor of Hurdle’s therapy; see cultural humility; always use in place of culturally competent.
disenfranchised: often used as a descriptor to intuit the sociodemographic makeup + historical racial inequities that have put Hurdle’s target client audiences at a disadvantage in the current U.S. mental healthcare system.
D2C: direct-to-consumer; see B2C.
evidence-based research: the use of prior research in a systematic and transparent way to inform a new study so that it is answering questions that matter in a valid, efficient, and accessible manner.
evidence-based therapy/practice (EBT / EBP): any therapy that has shown to be effective in peer-reviewed scientific experiments; movement in psychology that aims to track the efficacy of treatment plans, with the goal of providing clients with treatments that have solid evidence backing their effectiveness.
GAD-7: 7-item scale to measure for General Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
HCR model: Hurdle Cultural Responsiveness therapy model; Hurdle uses a scientifically validated tool to measure cultural responsiveness and then provides education and coaching to improve the cultural humility of therapists. Research shows that therapists whose patients perceive them as having cultural humility deliver improved therapy outcomes.
Hurdle Cultural Responsiveness Training (HCRT™): Hurdle Cultural Responsiveness Training; therapists complete the HCRT™, which equips them with the skills needed to effectively address issues of race, ethnicity, class, and culture.
Hurdle Health Hub: Hurdle’s technology platform to deliver culturally intentional mental healthcare. It encompasses patient and provider tools and services.
HurdlePro: Hurdle’s proprietary provider solution to enable therapists to deliver care to patients.
HurdleMind: Hurdle’s care solution for members and includes teletherapy and tools for self-care.
Inside Hurdle: Hurdle’s bi-weekly (every-other-week) newsletter featuring the company’s blog content, media = news links, and thematic messages; distribution: entire Hurdle network, including pipeline members, current members, therapists, investors, Hurdle friends.
Invisible Barriers: metaphorical language used to describe the systemic and historical inequities in the U.S. mental healthcare system that have prohibited People of Color and other disenfranchised communities from getting the help they need and deserve.
LGBTQ2+: acronym upon the first reference is fine; no need to spell out; use as a secondary descriptor in conjunction w/ BIPOC when describing Hurdle’s target client audience to highlight Hurdle’s understanding of the intersectionalities at play therapy.
licensed: a descriptor for Hurdle’s therapists; avoid certified; when character count allows, include that they are independently licensed in their respective states.
member: appropriate and preferred word to reference individuals who are registered for Hurdle therapy.
membership: types of Hurdle memberships include: On Demand, Gold Membership, and Platinum Membership; Gold: two teletherapy sessions/month; Platinum: four teletherapy sessions/month; On Demand: pay-as-you-go.
mental healthcare: vs mental health care.
(U.S.) mental healthcare system: use mental healthcare system w/o U.S. modifier in most cases; use U.S. modifier when drawing specific references to America’s historical disenfranchisement of BIPOC populations in the healthcare system.
mental health professional: use sparingly; an acceptable alternative to therapist when variety is necessary.
mental illness: use w/ specificity, citing examples like depression, anxiety, and burnout. Use when referencing the specialty areas of Hurdle’s therapists. When citing Hurdle’s specialty areas, always include reference to depression, anxiety, stress.
microaggression: classically defined as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” Microaggressions cause frustration, self-doubt, anxiety, and cumulative emotional, psychic, and spiritual burden. Unlike macroaggressions, large-scale, overt aggressions that mostly occur at the systems level, microaggressions are interpersonal, and often occur in academic and professional settings. It should be noted that academic dialogue is pushing for use of racial abuse vs microaggressions.
pairing: (as in pairing a member).
PCL-C: Post traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist; The PCL-C is a 17-item self-report checklist of PTSD symptoms based closely on the DSM-IV criteria.
PHQ-9: the major depressive disorder (MDD) module of the full Patient Health Questionnaire; not a screening tool for depression but it is used to monitor the severity of depression and response to treatment.
pronouns: she/he/they/ze; any advice must be combined with a specific context and use of good judgment in order to determine which pronoun is appropriate to a specific situation.
racial and cultural injustice: refers to the policies and practices within and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor, or put a racial group at a disadvantage.
racial trauma: or race-based traumatic stress (RBTS), refers to the mental and emotional injury caused by encounters with racial bias and ethnic discrimination, racism, and hate crimes. Any individual that has experienced an emotionally painful, sudden, and uncontrollable racist encounter is at risk of suffering from a race-based traumatic stress injury. In the U.S., Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) are most vulnerable due to living under a system of white supremacy.
systemic oppression: the intentional disadvantaging of groups of people based on their identity while advantaging members of the dominant group (gender, race, class, sexual orientation, language, etc.).
systemic racism: synonymous with “structural racism”; if there is a difference between the terms, it can be said to exist in the fact that a structural racism analysis pays more attention to the historical, cultural, and social psychological aspects of our currently racialized society.
structural racism: a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuateracial group inequity.
therapist: a primary descriptor for Hurdle’s network of therapists; lead with a licensed therapist(s) upon the first reference; an acceptable alternative is mental health professional when variety is necessary; avoid counselor, social worker, wellness professional, healer, etc.
therapy: use therapy in the context of what a client schedules, e.g. “Schedule your first online therapy session with one of Hurdle’s licensed therapists”; use teletherapy (no hyphen) when referencing Hurdle’s primary service offering, e.g. “In addition to our culturally responsive teletherapy, Hurdle has a suite of services to support your wellness and mental health”; avoid counseling.
Tuesday Tips: brief tips designed to educate others on Hurdle’s values and how we can embody those values in our daily lives.
underserved: often used as a descriptor to intuit the sociodemographic makeup + historical racial inequities that have put Hurdle’s target client audiences at a disadvantage in the mental healthcare system.
