Mental Status Exam Flashcards
the emotion that the patient tells you he feels or is conveyed nonverbally
mood
an assessment of how the patient’s mood appears to the examiner, including the amount and range of emotional expression
affect
describes the depth and range of the feeling shown (flat, blunted, constricted, full)
quality
describes how quickly a person appears to shift emotional states (sluggish, supple, labile)
motility
describes whether the affect is congruent with the subject of conversation
appropriateness
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
thought process
point of conversation is reached after circuitous path
circumstantiality
point of conversation never reached due to lack of goal directed association between ideas
tangentiality
no logical connection from one though to another
loosening of associations
a fast stream of though and speech
flight of ideas
made up words
neologisms
incoherent collection of words
word salad
word connections due to phonetics rather than actual meaning (my car is red, ive been in bed, it hurts my head)
clang associations
abrupt cessation of communication before the idea is finished
thought blocking
fixed, false beliefs not shared by the person’s culture and cannot be changed by reasoning
delusions
sensory experiences not based in reality (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory)
hallucinations
innacurate perception of existing sensory stimuli
illusions
patient’s level of awareness, possible range from alert-drowsy-lethargic-stuporous-coma
consciousness
ability to subtract serial 7s from 100 or to spell “world” backwards
attention/concentration
ability to explain similarities between objects and understand the meaning of simple proverbs
abstract concepts
patient’s level of awareness and understanding of his or her problem, can have complete denial of illness or blaming it on something else
insight
patient’s ability to understand the outcome of his or her actions and use this awareness in decision making
judgment
evidence of hallucinations-_______ of reality
sense
evidence of delusional ideas-_______ of reality
judgment
