ECP Flashcards
What things would you look for in a patients appearance?
Distinguishing features (scars, tattoos, sign of IV drug use) Weight Stigmata of disease Personal hygiene Clothing Objects
What would you be looking at in the behaviour assessment of an MSE?
Engagement and rapport Eye contact Facial expression Body language Psychomotor activity Abnomrla movements or postures
How might you describe the engagement and rapport of a pt with schizophrenia?
Might be engaging with hallucinations e.g. replying to auditory hallucinations
What is psychomotor retardation?
Paucity of movement and delayed responses to questions
Give exmaple abnormal movements or postures
Involuntary movements Tremors Tics Lip-smacking Akathisias Rocking
What are you looking for in the speech assessment in an MSE
Rate of speech Quantity of speech Tone Volume Fluency and rhythm
Where might you see excessive speech?
Mania and schizophrenia
Where might you see monotonous speech?
Depression, schizophrenia and ASD
Where would you see tremulous speech?
Anxiety
Where might you find slurred speech?
Major depression due to psychomotor retardation
What is the difference between mood and affect?
Mood = what the pt tells you about their predominant subjective internal state
Affect is what is immediately expressed and observed emotion
How do we assess affect?
Apparent emotion
Range and mobility of affect
Intensity of affect
Congruency of affect
What is meant by range and mobility of affect?
Range and mobility of affect refer to the variability observed in the patient’s affect during the assessment.
What is fixed affect?
The patient’s affect remains the same throughout the interview, regardless of the topic.
What is restricted affect?
The patient’s affect changes slightly throughout the interview, but doesn’t demonstrate the normal range of emotional expression that would be expected
What is labile affect?
Characterised by exaggerated changes in emotion which may or may not relate to external triggers. Patients typically feel like they have no control over their emotions
Where might you see heightened intensity of affect?
Associated with mania and some PDs
What is meant by congruency of affect?
Note if the patient’s affect appears in keeping with the content of their thoughts (known as congruency). A patient sharing distressing thoughts whilst demonstrating a flat affect or laughing would be described as showing incongruent affect. Incongruent affect is typically associated with schizophrenia.
What is meant by thought form?
Refers to the processing and organisation of thoughts
What might you be looking for with regards to thought form?
Speed of thoughts
Flow and coherence of thoughts
What are loose associations?
Moving rapidly from one topic to another with no apparent connection between the topics
What is meant by circumstantiality?
Thoughts which include lots of irrelevant and unnecessary details
What are tangential thoughts?
Digressions from the main conversation subject, introducing thoughts that seem unrelated, oblique, and irrelevant.
What is flight of ideas?
There is an accelerated tempo of speech often referred to as ‘pressure of speech’. In addition to the increased rate of delivery, the language employed is characterised by a wealth of associations, many of which seem to be evoked by more or less accidental connections… the excited speech wanders off the point following the arbitrary connections, and the coherent progression of ideas tends to become obscured
What is thought blocking?
sudden cessation of thought, typically mid-sentence, with the patient being unable to recover what was previously said.
What is perserveration?
Refers to the repetition of a particular response (such as a word, phrase or gesture) despite the absence/removal of the stimulus (e.g. a patient is asked what their name is and they then continue to repeat their name as the answer to all further questions)
What are neologisms?
Words a patient has made-up which are unintelligible to another person.
How do we assess patient thought?
Form, content and possession
How do we assess thought content?
Delusions Obsessions Compulsions Overvalued ideas Suicidal thoughts Homicidal/violent thoughts
What is a delusion?
A firm, fixed belief based on inadequate grounds, not amenable to a rational argument or evidence to the contrary and not in sync with regional and cultural norms. These may include persecutory delusions, in which the patient erroneously believes another individual or group is trying to harm them or ideas of reference, in which the individual incorrectly believes specific events relate to them.
What is an obsession?
Thoughts, images or impulses that occur repeatedly and feel out of the person’s control. The patient is aware these obsessions are irrational, but the thoughts continue to enter their head.
What are compulsions?
Repetitive behaviours that the patient feels compelled to perform despite recognising the irrationality of the behaviour
What are overvalued ideas?
A solitary, abnormal belief that is neither delusional nor obsessional in nature, but which is preoccupying to the extent of dominating the sufferer’s life (e.g. the perception of being overweight in a patient with anorexia nervosa).
How do we assess thought possession?
Thought insertion: a belief that thoughts can be inserted into the patient’s mind.
Thought withdrawal: a belief that thoughts can be removed from the patient’s mind.
Thought broadcasting: a belief that others can hear the patient’s thoughts.
Define perception
Perception involves the organisation, identification and interpretation of sensory information to understand the world around us
Give five abnormalities of perception
Hallucinations Pseudo-hallucinations Illusions Depersonalisation Derealisation
What is a hallucination?
A sensory perception without any external stimulation of the relevant sense that the patient believes is real (e.g. the patient hears voices but no sound is present)
What is a pseudo-hallucination?
The same as a hallucination but the patient is aware that it is not real.
What is an illusion?
The misinterpretation of an external stimulus (e.g. mistaking a shadow for a person).
What is meant by depersonalisation
The patient feels that they are no longer their ‘true’ self and are someone different or strange.
What is derealisation?
A sense that the world around them is not a true reality.
What is meant by cognition?
Cognition refers to “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses”.
How do we assess cognition?
Whether they are oriented in time, place and person
What their attention span and concentration levels are like
w]What their short-term memory is like
What is meant by insight?
Insight, in a mental state examination context, refers to the ability of a patient to understand that they have a mental health problem and that what they’re experiencing is abnormal.
What is meant by judgement?
Judgement refers to the ability to make considered decisions or come to a sensible conclusion when presented with information.
How might you assess judgement?
You may get some idea of the patient’s judgement abilities as you move through the mental state examination, but you can also specifically assess judgement by presenting the patient a scenario such as:
“What would you do if you could smell smoke in your house?”
How do psychotropics compare to general medical medications?
Effect size is similar to other treatments in medicine
Give three example TCAs
Amitriptyline, lofepramine, clomipramine
How do TCAs produce therapeutic effect in depression?
Inhibit serotonin and noradrenaline uptake
Give an example noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor (NaRI)
Reboxetine
Lofepramine (TCA) is similar