Psychiatric Symptoms and MSE Flashcards
What are some ways to describe mood?
Elated Euthymic Apathetic Irritable Sad or Depressed Suicidal
What are some ways to describe affect?
Appropriate Inappropriate Flat Full Range or Mobility Constricted or Restricted Incongruent Labile
What is mood?
Mood is the pervasive feeling state or emotion a person is feeling. It is sustained and influences how a person responds to other people.
What is affect?
Affect is the objectively observable expression of a person’s mood state.
Some descriptors of patient speech?
fluent speech pressured speech rapid speech paucity of speech echolalia
Echolalia
unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person
Neologisms
a newly coined word or expression (patient is making shit up)
Blocking, or Thought Blocking
The unpleasant experience of having one’s train of thought curtailed absolutely, often more a sign than a symptom.
Flight of Ideas
In mania and hypomania thoughts become pressured and ideas may race from topic to topic, guided sometimes only by rhymes or puns. Ideas are associated though, unlike thought disorder.
Perseveration (echolalia is an example!)
Describes an inappropriate repetition of some behavior or thought or speech. Talking exclusively on one subject might be described as perseveration on a theme. Perseveration of thought indicates an inability to switch ideas, so that in an interview a patient may continue to give the same responses to later questions as he did to earlier ones.
Perseveration is sometimes a feature of frontal lobe lesions.
Some descriptors of thought process?
Rational Pertinent Logical Sequential Relevant Goal directed Circumstantial Obsessions Compulsions Hallucinations Illusions Delusions Depersonalization Derealization
Circumstantial speech
the result of a non-linear thought pattern and occurs when the focus of a conversation drifts, but often comes back to the point. In circumstantiality, unnecessary details and irrelevant remarks cause a delay in getting to the point
Derealization
An experience where the person perceives the world around them to be unreal. The experience is linked to depersonalisation.
Depersonalization
An experience where the self is felt to be unreal, detached from reality or different in some way. Depersonalisation can be triggered by tiredness, dissociative episodes or partial epileptic seizures.
Things to assess for intellectual and cognitive function…
Level of consciousness Concentration Orientation Memory Intelligence Fund of knowledge Abstract reasoning
What is a patient’s insight?
The patient’s self awareness that one does or does not have a problem.
No insight
Limited insight
Denial
What is judgment?
Judgment refers to one’s ability to appreciate the effects of their behavior on their own future or the well being of others.
Dissociation
splitting off clusters of mental contents from conscious awareness
Intellectualization
engagement in abstract thinking to ward off conflict or disturbing feelings
Projection
what is emotionally unacceptable in the self is unconsciously rejected and attributed to others
Rationalization
individual attempts to make unacceptable feeling acceptable by justification
Reaction formation
person adopts ideas and behaviors that are the opposite of impulses harbored consciously or unconsciously (ie, excessive moral zeal may be a reaction to strong but repressed asocial impulses)
Repression
banishment of unacceptable fantasies or ideas from the conscious mind
Sublimation
unacceptable conscious drives are redirected into personally and socially acceptable channels
Substitution
an unacceptable emotion is replaced by one that is more acceptable
