MENTAL STATUS EXAMINATION

Rabia Jameel
MENTAL STATUS EXAMINATION
 Current state of mind
 Concerned with the symptoms and behavior at
the time of interview
 Starting point
 Help in identifying the severity level and provide
guidline for management
DIMENTIONS
 Apperance and Behavior
 Mood & Affact
 Speech
 Memory
 Perception
 Delusion
 Orientation
 Attention & Concentration
 Depersonalization & Derealization
 Obssessional Phenomena
 Insight
APPEARANCE & BEHAVIOR
 Personal hygeine
 Clothing
 Hair
 Position of body
 Gait
 level of eye contact
CONTI..
 Facial expression

 Stability
 Overt behavior
 Movement (agility, twitches)
 Attitude towards the examimer
CONTI..
 Social behavior
 Disinhibited
 Withdraw
 Preoccupied
 Aggressive
MOOD & AFFECT
 Mood is told by the client himself
 Congurant
 Incongurant
 Dysphoric
 Euthymic
 Irritable
 Mood swings
 Elevated (air of confidence & enjoyment)
 Alexithymia (person’s inability or difficulity in describing or
being aware of emotion)
CONTI..
 Affact is something that psychologist conclude on the
basis of facial expression
 Appropriate affect /inappropriate affect
 Normal affect
 Blunted ( severe reduction)
 Restricted or constricted affect (reduction in intensity of
feeling tone, less severe than blunted affect)
 Flat ( absence or near absence of any sign)
 Labile affect (rapid & abrupt change, unrelated to external
stimuli)
SPEECH
 Tone of voice
 Content
 Pressure (rapid speech in increased amount &
difficult to interrupt)
 Rate & quality (fast & slow)
 Pauses
 Poverty of speech (restriction in the amount of
speech used, monosyllabic)
CONTI..
 Nonspontaneous speech (no self-initiation)
 Stuttering (repetition, prolongation & pauses)
 Cluttering (erratic & disrhythmic speech,
consisting of rapid & jerky spurts)
 Mumbling
 Flight of idea
MEMORY
 Remote memory (old childhood experiences)
 Recent memory (recall of event of past few days)
 Recent past memory (recall of event over past
few months)
 Imidiate memory (recall of perceived material
within seconds & minutes)
 Short term memory
PERCEPTION
 The way of getting meaning of the things
 Illusions
 Hallucination
 Auditory
 Visual
 Olfactory
 Gustatory
 Somatic/Tactile
 Hypnagogic (occuring while falling asleep)
 Hypnopomic (occurring while awakening from sleep)
 DELUSION
 False believes
 Delusion of Persecution

 Delusion of thought broadcasting

 Delusion of thought insertion

 Delusion of thought withdrawal

 Delusion of control

 Delusion of reference
CONTI..
 Delusion of grandeur
 Delusion of self-accusation ( false feeling of remorse
& guilt)
 Delusion of infidelity (person’s lover being
unfaithful)
 Erotomania (someone is deeply in love with lady)
 Nihilistic delusion (world is nonexistent or to an end)
 Beizarre delusion
 Nonbeizarre delusion
ORIENTATION
 Awarence from surrounding
 Related to reality
 Time, place and person
ATTENTION & CONCENTRATION
 Attention is the ability to focus on the matter in
hand
 Concentration in the ability to sustain that focus
DEPERSONALIZATION & DEREALIZATION
OBSESSIONAL PHENOMENA

 Obsessional thoughts
 Compulsive rituals
INSIGHT
THINKING

 Goal directed flow of ideas, symbols and

associations initiated by a problem or task and
leading toward a reality-oriented conclusion
GENERAL DISTURBANCES IN FORM OR PROCESS OF THINKING

 Mental disorder
 Psychosis
 Reality testing (objective evaluation & judgement
of the world outside the self)
 Illogical thinking (thinking contain erroneous
conclusion)
 Autistic thinking
 Megical thinking
A. DISTURBANCE IN PROCESS/FORM OF THOUGHT

 Problem of thought process

 Flight of idea
 Neologism
 Circumstantiality
 Tangentiality
 Incoherence
 Perseveration
CONTI..
 Verbigeration
 Echolalia
 Palilalia
 Loosening of association
 Derailment
 Clang association
 Blocking
 Irrelevant answer
SPECIFIC DISTURBANCES IN CONTENT OF THOUGHT

 Delusion of grandeur
 Delusion of self-accusation ( false feeling of remorse
& guilt)
 Delusion of infidelity (person’s lover being
unfaithful)
 Erotomania (someone is deeply in love with lady)
 Nihilistic delusion (world is nonexistent or to an end)
 Beizarre delusion
 Nonbeizarre delusion