MSE & Psychiatric Interview

Question 1

Mental state exam features?

Answer 1

Appearance
Behaviors
Speech
Affect
Thought
Perception
Cognition
Insight

Question 2

Explain behaviour in MSE?

Answer 2

Gait
General activity
Movements/tics
Facial expression
Eye contact
Limb movements
Tearful/laughing

Question 3

Speech and language description in MSE?

Answer 3

Volume
Prosody: speech rhythm
Pressure
Dysarthria

Language
Dysphasia

Question 4

How is mood and affect evaluated? The content?

Answer 4

Quality (sad, suspicious, elated)
Intensity (mild, moderate, severe)
Range, reactivity
Congruence
Communication

Question 5

Term for perplexity?

Answer 5

Bewildered
Puzzled

Occurs with serious thinking abnormality (organic/psychotic)

Question 6

What is a fatuous affect?

Answer 6

• Vacant, silly, superficial
• Incongruent with thought/situation
• Think psychotic

Question 7

Dynamics of affect?

Answer 7

How it changes during interview.

Restricted affect: eg. Depression, no different states
Commonly reduced in organic/psychotic and affective disorders

Question 8

What is the reactivity in the affect?

Answer 8

How fast each affect state is changing

Lability - Rapid shift from sad to euphoric (mania)
Irritability - (mania), rapid into anger
‘Flatness’: restrictions of tone of an affect (depression)

Question 9

What is a blunted affect? When see it commonly?

Answer 9

• Loss of emotionality or empathy for the event
• No bodily language for feeling states

Cardinal feature in Schizophrenia

Question 10

What is congruence of affect?

What condition affects congruence?

Answer 10

Talk about sad things: feels sad

Affective disorders

Question 11

What is communication of affect?

Answer 11

Picking up the feeling state of the patient by feeling it in yourself

Question 12

What is the communication of affect in schizophrenia?

Answer 12

‘Pane of glass’, you feel nothing

Question 13

Thought description in MSE?

Answer 13

Stream
Form
Content
Possession

Question 14

Thought description in MSE for stream?

Answer 14

Slow
Fast
Pressured’ - manic
Increased latency

Question 15

What is Form for Thought description in MSE?

Answer 15

connectivity of ideas

-logicality and understandability of connections between one thought and another.

Question 16

What flight of ideas? See when?

Answer 16

Manic - rapid thinking

Question 17

3 types of abnormalities of thought form with normal connections?

Answer 17

Flight of ideas
Retarted thinking
Circumstantiality

Question 18

What is circumstantiality for thought form?

Answer 18

Talking around the point, takes a long time

Question 19

Abnormalities of thought form with abnormal connections?

Answer 19

Tangentiality
Derailment: suddenly start talking about something else.
Blocking: stop halfway throughout idea
Word salad

Question 20

Thought content What is overvalued ideas?

Answer 20

Preoccupies the patient
Strong emotional investment
Passionately held, amenable to some reason

Question 21

Delusional thinking Thought content is?

Answer 21

• Fixed false belief
• Great personal significance
• Absolute conviction
• generally regarded as false by others
• out of keeping with education/cultural, social background
• emerge in pathological manner
• Can extend into other beliefs

Question 22

What is a primary delusion?

Answer 22

Out of the blue (de-novo)

Irreducible

Question 23

What are the 4 primary common delusion?

Answer 23

1. Sudden autochthonous delusion
2. Delusional atmosphere
3. Delusional perception
4. Delusional memory

Question 24

What is a secondary delusion?

Answer 24

Delusion-like ideas

• Coming out of other events
• psychologically reducible
• can be possibly treated

Question 25

Content delusions?

Answer 25

Bizarre vs. Non Bizarre

Persecution
Passion - jealousy (can be deadly)
Identity: grandeur
Non-existence
Somatic/hypochondriacal "illness"
Reference

Question 26

What is first rank auditory hallucination?

Answer 26

Hearing one’s thoughts out loud, running commentary, discussion in third person

Question 27

Phenomenology?

Answer 27

Examine without presupposition but by pure description