Mental Status Examination Flashcards
Sustained Muscle contractions, which can cause twisting or abnormal postures. E.g. cervical dystonia (torticollis or twisted neck)
Dystonia
Involuntary, repetitive movements of the face, mouth, and tongue. Common movements include lip smacking, tongue thrusting, chewing, and grimacing. It is a movement disorder that can develop as a side effect of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.
Tardive dyskinesia
Sudden, recurrent, and nonrhythmic actions which may be vocal and/or motor
Tics
Brief and purposeless movements that usually involve the face and neck (e.g. eye blinks, shoulder shrugs) and less often involve the extremities (e.g. hopping)
Motor tics
Sudden, repetitive involuntary sounds, for example, brief grunts, coughing sounds, howling or barking-like noises, or more elaborate vocalizations that sometimes include obscene words (coprolalia)
Vocal tics
Involuntary, repetitive, rhythmic movements such as rocking, swaying, hand-flapping, and head banging
Stereotypic Movement
An objective observation of the patient’s emotion (physician observation of facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice)
Affect
Sad, mournful (e.g., the patient may exhibit slow movements; low speech volume; and/or break into tears easily)
Depressed
Inability to fully engage with their own feelings or the feelings of others; inability to be empathetic (e.g., the patient does not appear to display empathy or form emotional connections)
Detached
Normal, tranquil mood (e.g. the patient appears calm and at ease)
Euthymic
Positive, elated mood (e.g. the patient appears overly excited, joyful, or exhilarated)
Euphoric
Easily annoyed or made angry; agitated
Irritable
Sudden and frequent changes in expressed emotions (e.g. the patient may quickly change from a sad to a happy mood)
Labile
Decreased facial and vocal expressions and decreased expressive gestures in reaction to emotion-provoking stimuli; emotional responses to situations and events are dulled (e.g. the patient may lack an intense emotional response to distressing topics)
Blunted
No emotional responses to situations and events; no facial and vocal expressions and no expressive gestures in reaction to emotion-provoking stimuli (e.g., the patient lacks an emotional response to distressing topics)
Flat
Repetitions in speech or prolongations in speech; the patient may repeat sounds syllables, or words (e.g., may-may-may-may-maybe); or prolong sounds in a word (e.g., m-m-m-maybe)
Dysfluent
Unusual changes in pitch, intonation, stresses, phrasing, and rhythm in speech (e.g., the patient may chant or use a sing-song melody or use monotonic speech or question-like infection for matter-of-fact statements)
Dysprosodia
Automatic repetition of somebody else’s words (e.g. the patient may repeat words or phrases used by the physician either immediately or after a delay)
Echolalia
Speech that contains word-retrieval errors, common seen in patients who have a disorder of language (i.e, aphasia) after brain injury
Paraphasia
The incorrectly retrieved word is similar in meaning to the intended word (e.g., “boat” instead of “beach”
Semantic paraphasia
The incorrectly retrieved word is similar in sound based on syllable omissions/additions (e.g., “feletant” for “elephant”)
Phonemic paraphasia
The incorrectly retrieved word is a new word that is not similar in sound or meaning to another word (e.g., “drupong” for clock)
Neologistic paraphasia
Poorly elaborated speech (e.g. the patient may fail to answer questions or give only monosyllabic responses)
Poverty of speech
Abundant non-stop speech (e.g., the patient may be difficult to interrupt)
Pressured
Inappropriately formal speech (e.g., the patient may use pompous, legalistic, or overly intellectual terms and phrases)
Stilted
Omission of connecting words, prepositions, and modifiers when speaking, similar to an old telegraph (e.g., the patient may say, “bad sleep month” in response to a query about sleep habits)
Telegraphic
Indirect and winding speech in which the patient gives unnecessary and often irrelevant details before arriving at the main point; “beating around the bush” The patient eventually responds to a query but belatedly and with frequent parenthetical remarks
Circumstantial
Characterized by poor topic adherence; the patient provides an answer to a question that veers off from the topic of the question and does not return to the original topic but there is a logical connection between responses
Tangential
Rapidly jumping (“flight”) from topic to topic without completing each train of thought, often (but not always) expressed through rapid, pressured speech.
Flight of Ideas
No logical connection between ideas and the loss of an overall sense of goal-directedness. The words make sentences, but together the sentences do not make logical sense (the thought train is “off the track”)
Derailed
An association of words or ideas based on the similarity of sound rather than meaning (e.g., rhyming)
Clanging (clang association)
Words that are created by the patient and do not have any meaning to others (Ex. klipno for boots)
Neologistic
Repetitive thought process in which regardless of topic or question the patient goes back to the same topic and cannot move past the topic resulting in loss of goal-directedness in their thinking (e.g., patient often repeats previous statements in response to new questions)
Perseverative
A belief that someone holds with absolute certainty, but this belief is at odds with reality; fixed, false beliefs (e.g. a belief that you are the Queen of England)
Delusional
Preoccupation with distressing memories, thoughts, or worries with the hopes of obtaining new insight (the patient may repeatedly discuss a recent conflict in hopes of obtaining new insight); such goal-directedness is better preserved in ruminative thinking than in perseverative thinking. Furthermore, ruminations refer to the content of one’s thoughts, whereas perseverations refer to the process of one’s thinking
Ruminative
A persistently recurring thought, urge, or image that is experienced as intrusive and unwanted and results in marked anxiety or distress
Obsessional
