Examination and Diagnosis Flashcards
What are the main areas of the mental status exam?
Appearance, speech, mood, affect, thought process, thought content, perception (hallucinations/illusions), sensorium/cognition (consiousness, orientation, memory, etc), insight and judgement
What is the difference between mood and affect?
mood is the emotion the patient reports feeling
affect is an assessment of how the patient’s mood appears to the examiner
What are the three dimensions we use to describe affect?
quality (depth, and range - flat, blunted, constricted, full, intense)
motility (sluggish, supple, labile)
Appropriateness to content
What’s the difference between thought process and thought content?
process is how the patient puts ideas together - more an assessment on HOW someone thinks
thought content is the actual ideas expressed by the patient - an assessment of WHAT someone thinks
Describe loosening of associations.
no logical connection from one thought to another
Describe flight of ideas.
thoughts change abruption from one idea to another, usually accompanied by rapid/pressured speech
What is a neologism?
a made-up word
What is word salad?
an incoherent collection of words
What are clang associations?
word connections due to phonetics rather than actual meaning (my car is red, i’ve been in bed, it hurts my head)
What is thought blocking?
abrupt cessation of communication before the idea is finished
Describe tangentiality.
point of conversation is never reached due to lack of goal-directed associations between ideas
but the response is usually in the ballpark
What is circumstantiality?
similar to tangentiality, but the point of the conversation is eventually reached in a roundabout way with overinclusion of trivial or irrelevant details
What’s the difference between a hallucination and an illusion
a hallucination is a sensory perception in the absence of any actual stimulus
an illusion is an inaccurate perception of something that’s actually there
