Mental Status Flashcards

Significant behavioral or psychological pattern that is associated with distress (painful symptom) or disability (impaired functioning), and has a significant risk of pain, disability, or death, or a loss of freedom

• Due to brain disease of known specific organic cause
• Ex: Delirium, dementia, intoxication, and withdrawel

• Organic etiology has not yet been established
• Ex: Anxiety disorder or Schizophrenia

Being aware of one's own existence, feelings, and thoughts and aware of the environment

Using the voice to communicate one's thoughts and feelings

• Affect: Temporary expression of feelings or state of mind
• Mood: More durable, prolonged display of feelings that color the whole emotional life

Awareness of the objective world in relation to the self

Power of concentration, the ability to focus on one specific thing without being distracted by many environmental stimuli

Ability to lay down and store experiences and perceptions for later recall.

Pondering a deeper meaning beyond the concrete and literal

The way a person thinks, the logical train of thought

What the person thinks -- specific ideas, beliefs, the use of words

An awareness of objects through the five senses

• Appearance
• Behavior
• Cognition
• Thought Processes

• Family members are concerned about a person's behavioral changes
• Brain Lesions (trauma, tumor, brain attack)
• Aphasia
• Symptoms of psychiatric illness, especially with acute onset

Impairment of language ability secondary to brain damage

Awake or readily aroused, oriented, fully aware of external and internal stimuli and responds appropriately, conducts meaningful interpersonal interactions

Not fully alert, drifts off to sleep when not stimulated, can be aroused to name when called in normal voice but looks drowsy, responds appropriately to questions or commands but thinking seems low and fuzzy, inattentive, loses train of thought, spontaneous movements are decreased

Sleeps most of the time, difficult to arouse--needs loud shout or vigorous shake, acts confused when aroused, converses in monosyllables, speech may be mumbled and incoherent, requires constant stimulation for even marginal cooperation

Spontaneously unconscious, responds only to persistent and vigorous shake or pain; has appropriate motor response (ex. withdraws hand to avoid pain); otherwise can only groan, mumble, or move restlessly; reflex activity persists

Completely unconscious, no response to pain or to any external or internal stimuli, light coma has some reflex activity but no purposeful movement, deep coma has no motor response

Difficulty or discomfort in talking, with abnormal pitch or volume, due to laryngeal disease. Voice sounds whispered, but articulation and language are intact

Distorted speech sounds; speech may sound unintelligible; basic language (word choice, grammar, comprehension) intact

• Most common and severe
• Comprehension is absent or reduced to only the person's own name and a few select words
• Repetition, reading, and writing are severely impaired
• Caused by a large lesion that damages most of combined anterior and posterior language areas

• Expressive aphasia
• Person understands language, but can't express themselves using language
• Auditory and reading comprehensions are intact
• Lesion is in anterior language area called the motor speech cortex or Broca's area

• Receptive aphasia
• Person can hear sounds and words but cannot relate them to previous experiences
• Lesion is in posterior language area called the Association auditory cortex or Wernicke's Area

• Lack of emotional response
• No expression of feelings
• Voice monotonous and face immobile

• Sad, gloomy, dejected
• Symptoms may occur with rainy weather, after a holiday, or with an illness

• Loss of identity
• Feels estranged
• Perplexed about oen identity and meaning of existence

• Joy and optimism
• Overconfidence
• Increased motor activity
• Not necessarily pathologic

• Excessive well-being
• Unusually cheerful or elated, which is inappropriate considering physical and mental condition
• Implies a pathologic mood

Worried, uneasy, apprehensive from the anticipation of a danger whose source is unknown

• Worried, uneasy, apprehensive
• External danger is known and identified

• Annoyed
• Easily provoked
• Impatient

• Furious
• Loss of Control

Existence of opposing emotions toward an idea, object, person

Rapid shift of emotions

Affect clearly discordant with the content of the person's speech

Fabricates events to fill in memory gaps

• Coining a new word
• Invented word has no real meaning except for the person
• May condense several words

Round-about expression, substituting a phrase when cannot think of name of object

• Talks with excessive and unnecessary detail, delays reaching a point
• Sentences have a meaningful connection but are irrelevant

• Shifting from one topic to an unrelated topic
• Person seems unaware that topics are unconnected

• Abrupt change, rapid skipping from topic to topic, practically continuous floe of accelerated speech
• Topics usually have recognizable associations or are plays on words

• Incoherent mixture of words, phrases, and sentences
• Illogical, disconnected, includes neologisms

Persistent repeating of verbal or motor response, even with varied stimuli

• Imitation
• Repeats others' words or phrases, often with a mumbling, mocking, or mechanical tone

• Word choice based on sound, not meaning
• Includes nonsense rhymes and puns

• Delusions
• Hallucinations (auditory more common)
• Disorganized Speech
• Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
• Negative Symptoms (affective flattening, alogia, or avolition)

• Two or more characteristics
• For a significant part of a 1 month period