Mental Health Nursing

Repeated, purposeless behaviors

Repeating the movements of another person

Overall slowed movements

Person has arms or legs placed in any position and patient will hold that position for hours

Making masklike faces, drooling, and having shuffling gait, tremors, and muscular rigidity. Seen in people who are on anti-psychotic medications like phenothiazines

Displays motor restlessness, feeling of muscular quivering; at worst, patient is unable to sit or lie quietly.

Distortion of voluntary movements, such as involuntary muscular activity

Fixed, false belief held to be true even with evidence to the contrary

• persecution
• grandeur
• jealousy

An idea, impulse, or emotion that a person can’t put out of his/her consciousness. Can be mild or severe

Repetitive actions that people must do over and over until either they are exhausted or anxiety is decreased. Often done to lessen the anxiety triggered by an obsession.

Intense irrational fear of an object, situation or place. The fear persists even though the object of the fear is perfectly harmless and the person is aware of the irrationality

Delusional belief that others can hear or know what the client is thinking

Delusional belief that others are putting ideas or thoughts into the client’s head, ideas are not those of the client

Inaccurate interpretation that general events are personally directed to him/her such as hearing a speech on the news and believing the message had personal meaning

A sense perception for which no external stimuli exist. Can have an organic or a functional etiology (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, or gustatory

A misperception of actual sensory stimuli in the environment

Thoughts related by rhyming of words or sounds

Words a person makes up that have meaning only for the person themselves, often part of a delusional system

Repeating the speech of another person

Involuntary repetition of the same thought, phrase, or motor response to different questions or situations

Mixture of words and phrases that have no meaning

Association disturbances in which the person goes off the topic and never returns to the topic. Generally happens frequently in conversations

Disorganized thinking, haphazard, illogical and confused, jumps from one idea to another with little or no relation between ideas. Connections in thought are interrupted

Constant flow of speech in which the person jumps from one topic to another in rapid succession. Fragmented or unrelated ideas, at least of the surface. Connection is there, just hard to identify

Sudden abrupt cessation of a thought in the middle of a sentence or train of thought. Sometimes can’t continue train of thought, sometimes sudden new thoughts crop up that are unrelated to the topic

Before getting to the point gives excessive unnecessary detail and explanations

Filling in a memory gap with detail fantasy believed by the person. The purpose is to maintain self-esteem and is seen in organic condtions