Mental Health Flashcards
The ability to focus or concentrate over time on one task or activity—an inattentive or distractible person with impaired consciousness has difficulty giving a history or responding to questions
Attention
The process of registering or recording information, tested by asking for immediate repetition of material, followed by storage or retention of information
Memory
Awareness of personal identity, place, and time, requires both memory and attention
Orientation
Sensory awareness of objects in the environment and their interrelationships (external stimuli), also refers to internal stimuli such as dreams or hallucinations
Perception
The logic, coherence, and relevance of the patient’s thought as it leads to selected goals, or how people think
Thought process
What the patient thinks about, including level of insight and judgment
Thought content
Awareness that symptoms or disturbed behaviors are normal or abnormal
Insight
Process of comparing and evaluating alternatives when deciding on a course of action; reflects values that may or may not be based on reality and social conventions or norms
Judgment
An observable, usually episodic, feeling or tone expressed through voice, facial expression, and demeanor
Affect
A more sustained emotion that may color a person’s view of the world
Mood
A complex symbolic system for expressing, receiving, and comprehending words, as with consciousness, attention ad memory, language is essential for assessing other mental functions
Language
Assessed by vocabulary, amount of information, abstract thinking, calculations, and construction of objects that have two or three dimensions
Higher cognitive functions
when obtain HPI it is important to obtain pre-morbid personality
- Social relationships
- Mood
- Attitudes toward work or responsibilities
- Typical response to criticism or praise
- Leisure activities and hobbies
Mental status examination consists of six components:
- appearance and behavior
- speech and language
- mood
- thoughts and perceptions
- insight and judgment
- cognitive function
speech & language deficit evaluation technique
patients who struggle with naming emotions
alexithymia ( helpful to list some emotions for them to choose from)
lack of goal directedness, incorporating tedious and unnecessary details, with
difficulty in arriving at an end point.
Thought process-
Circumstantiality
digresses from the subject, introducing thoughts that seem unrelated, oblique, and
irrelevant.
Thought process-
Tangentiality
sudden cessation in the middle of a sentence at which point a patient cannot
recover what has been said
Thought process-
Thought blocking
jumping from one topic to another with no apparent connection between the
topics
Thought process-
Loose associations
Speech with unnecessary detail, indirection, and delay in reaching the point. Some topics may have a meaningful connection
Thought process-
Circumstantiality
Sudden interruption of speech in midsentence or before the idea is completed, attributed to “losing the thought”; can occur in normal people
Thought process-
Blocking
An almost continuous flow of accelerated speech with abrupt changes from one topic to the next.
Thought process-
Flight of ideas
Fabrication of facts or events in response to questions, to fill in the gaps from impaired memory
Thought process-
Confabulation
Speech that is incomprehensible and illogic, with lack of meaningful connections, abrupt changes in topic, or disordered grammar or word use.
Thought process-
Incoherence