Psychiatry Flashcards
When can involuntary admission be implemented?
- Patient has mental disorder
- Needs detention for assessment/treatment of it
- Admission is to protect themselves or others
What is section 2 of the mental health act
- Admission for assessment for up to 28 days
- 2 doctors and AMHP present
What is section 3 of mental health act
- Admission for treatment for up to 6 months
- Can be renewed indefinitely
- Exact mental disorder stated and appropriate treatment available
- Two doctors sign and find reason that community treatment is contraindicated
- Treatment must be likely to benefit patient, prevent deterioration, necessary for health or safety of patient or protection of others
What is section 4 of the mental health act
- Admission for emergency treatment for up to 72 hours
- Admission must be urgent necessity
- AMHP makes application after recommendation from one doctor
- Patient must be seen within 72 hrs by doctor to decide whether to put section 2/3, voluntary admission or discharge
What is section 5(2) of mental health act
- Detention of patient already in hospital for up to 72 hours
- Doctors holding powers
Section 5(4) of mental health act
- Nurse’s holding powers for up to 6 hours
- Detain patient who is taking discharge against advice
- During 6 hours nurse must find personnel to sign section 5(2) or allow discharge
Section 135 of mental health act
- Allows police to force entry into someone’s premises to allow assessment under MHA to be made or bring them to place of safety
- Warrant from Magistrates court required and accompanied by AMHP and/or doctor
Section 136 of mental health act
- Allows police to arrest person ‘in a place to which public have access’ who they believe to be suffering from a mental disorder in order to convey them directly to a place of safety
- Held under section 136 for up to 72 hrs during which they should be seen by doctor and AMHP to choose to complete MHA assessment, admit them informally or discharge them
Mental capacity act (2005)
- Presumption of capacity
- Individuals supported to make their own decisions
- Unwise decisions
- Best interests
- Less restrictive option
What is a hallucination
- Occur in any sensory modality without an external stimulus
- Felt to occur in the external world along other objects, have the same qualities as everything else and cannot be consciously manipulated or stopped
- To the person experiencing them, these experiences are real
- Auditory = thoughts spoken aloud, second-person hallucinations, third-person hallucinations
- Visual = More common in eye pathology and epilepsy than psychosis
What is a delusion
beliefs held unshakably, irrespective of counter-argument, that are unexpected and out of keeping with patient’s cultural background
Loosening of association
thought disturbance demonstrated by speech that is disconnected and fragmented with individual jumping from one idea to another unrelated or indirectly related idea
Circumstantiality
including a lot of unnecessary and insignificant details in your conversation or writing
Confabulation
production or creation of false or erroneous memories without intent to deceive. Or, falsification of memory by person who believes they are genuinely communicating truthful memories
Somatic passivity
experience of bodily sensations (including actions, thoughts or emotions) imposed by external agency
* E.g. voices commentating on one’s action
* E.g. voices describe patient’s activities as they occur
Anhedonia
inability to feel pleasure
Thought alienation
subjective experience of one’s own thoughts being under control of an outside agency
* Thought Insertion = foreign thoughts places into one’s mind
* Thought Withdrawal = thoughts suddenly disappearing (having been taken by external thought)
* Thought Broadcast = thoughts being transmitted to everyone around as though being played on a radio
Thought echo
form of auditory hallucination in which a patient hears their thoughts spoken aloud
* Associated with schizophrenia
Thought block
someone loses a train of thought for no apparent reason, which may cause them to suddenly stop speaking
* Can occur at any time due to tiredness or stress
Akathisia
inability to remain still
* Neuropsychiatric syndrome associated with psychomotor restlessness
* Experience intense sensation of unease or inner restlessness
Catatonia
group of symptoms that usually involve movement and communication
* Agitation, confusion, restlessness
Flight of ideas
Subjective quickening of thoughts so most are not carried to completion before being overtaken
* Meaningful connections between ideas are kept although often linked by distracting environmental cues or form words themselves spoken aloud
o E.g. puns, rhymes, clang associations
* Retardation of thinking is slowing of train of thought although is remains goal directed
* Opposite is pressure of speech
Dissociation
hysteria
* Amnesia
* Depersonalisation = feeling being detached from one’s body or ideas
* Dissociative identity disorder = patient has multiple personalities which interact in complex ways
* Fugue = inability to recall one’s past, loss of identity or formation of new identity
What is generalised anxiety disorder
Excessive state of anxiety across different situations that last >6m and interferes with daily life