Mental Status Exam

Question 1

the emotion that the patient tells you he feels or is conveyed nonverbally

Answer 1

mood

Question 2

an assessment of how the patient’s mood appears to the examiner, including the amount and range of emotional expression

Answer 2

affect

Question 3

describes the depth and range of the feeling shown (flat, blunted, constricted, full)

Answer 3

quality

Question 4

describes how quickly a person appears to shift emotional states (sluggish, supple, labile)

Answer 4

motility

Question 5

describes whether the affect is congruent with the subject of conversation

Answer 5

appropriateness

Question 6

patient’s form of thinking, how he or she used language and puts ideas together, describes whether thoughts are logical, meaningful, linear, and goal directed

Answer 6

thought process

Question 7

point of conversation is reached after circuitous path

Answer 7

circumstantiality

Question 8

point of conversation never reached due to lack of goal directed association between ideas

Answer 8

tangentiality

Question 9

no logical connection from one though to another

Answer 9

loosening of associations

Question 10

a fast stream of though and speech

Answer 10

flight of ideas

Question 11

made up words

Answer 11

neologisms

Question 12

incoherent collection of words

Answer 12

word salad

Question 13

word connections due to phonetics rather than actual meaning (my car is red, ive been in bed, it hurts my head)

Answer 13

clang associations

Question 14

abrupt cessation of communication before the idea is finished

Answer 14

thought blocking

Question 15

fixed, false beliefs not shared by the person’s culture and cannot be changed by reasoning

Answer 15

delusions

Question 16

sensory experiences not based in reality (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory)

Answer 16

hallucinations

Question 17

innacurate perception of existing sensory stimuli

Answer 17

illusions

Question 18

patient’s level of awareness, possible range from alert-drowsy-lethargic-stuporous-coma

Answer 18

consciousness

Question 19

ability to subtract serial 7s from 100 or to spell “world” backwards

Answer 19

attention/concentration

Question 20

ability to explain similarities between objects and understand the meaning of simple proverbs

Answer 20

abstract concepts

Question 21

patient’s level of awareness and understanding of his or her problem, can have complete denial of illness or blaming it on something else

Answer 21

insight

Question 22

patient’s ability to understand the outcome of his or her actions and use this awareness in decision making

Answer 22

judgment

Question 23

evidence of hallucinations-_______ of reality

Answer 23

sense

Question 24

evidence of delusional ideas-_______ of reality

Answer 24

judgment