Mental Status Examination (MSE)

Mental Status Examination

An assessment of a patient’s level of cognitive (knowledge-related) ability, appearance, emotional mood, and speech and thought patterns at the time of evaluation

Mini-Mental State Examination

The most commonly used test of cognitive functioning per se is the so-called Folstein _______________________________________.

1975

MMSE is developed in _________.

Presence

---

Extent

---

Mental impairment

The purpose of a mental status examination is to assess the _________ and ________ of a person’s ________________________.

Cannot pay attention

The MSE cannot be given to a patient who ____________________________ to the examiner.

10

A complete MSE is more comprehensive and evaluates the following _____ areas of functioning.

1. Appearance

2. Movement and behavior

3. Affect

4. Mood

5. Speech

6. Thought Content

7. Thought Process

8. Cognition

9. Judgment

10. Insight

Enumerate the areas of functioning in MSE.

Appearance


The examiner notes the person’s age, race, sex, civil status, and overall appearance. These features are significant because poor personal hygiene or grooming may reflect a loss of interest in self-care or physical inability to bathe or dress oneself.

Movement and Behavior


The examiner observes the person’s gait (manner of walking), posture, coordination, eye contact, facial expressions, and similar behaviors.

Affect


Refers to a person’s outwardly observable emotional reactions. It may include either a lack of emotional response to an event or an overreaction.

Mood


Refers to the underlying emotional “atmosphere” or tone of the person’s answers.

Speech


The examiner evaluates the volume of the person’s voice, the rate or speed of speech, the length of answers to questions, the appropriateness and clarity of the answers, and similar characteristics.

Thought Content


The examiner assesses what the patient is saying for indications of hallucinations, delusions, obsessions, symptoms of dissociation, or thoughts of suicide.

Thought Process


Refers to the logical connections between thoughts and their relevance to the main thread of conversation. Irrelevant detail, repeated words and phrases, interrupted thinking (thought blocking), and loose, illogical connections between thoughts, may be signs of a thought disorder.

Cognition


The act or condition of knowing.

Cognition


The evaluation assesses the person’s orientation, long and short-term memory, ability to perform simple arithmetic, general intellectual level or fund of knowledge, ability to think abstractly, ability to name specified objects and read or write complete sentences, ability to understand and perform a task, ability to draw a simple map or copy a design or geometrical figure, and ability to distinguish between right and left.

Judgment


The examiner asks the person what he or she would do about a commonsense problem, such as running out of a prescription medication.

Insight


Refers to a person’s ability to recognize a problem and understand its nature and severity.

Aphasia


The loss of the ability to speak, or to understand written or spoken language.

Aphasic

A person who cannot speak or understand language is said to be ___________.

Cognition


The act or process of knowing or perceiving.

Coma


A state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot respond to spoken commands or mildly painful physical stimuli.

Delusion


A belief that is resistant to reason or contrary to actual fact.

Dementia


A decline in a person’s level of intellectual functioning. It includes memory loss as well as difficulties with language, simple calculations, planning or decision-making, and motor (muscular movement) skills.

Dissociation


The splitting off of certain mental processes from conscious awareness.

Obsession


Domination of thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, desire, or image.

Hallucination


A sensory experience, usually involving either sight or hearing, of something that does not exist outside the mind.

Illusion


A false visual perception of an object that others perceive correctly.

Organic Brain Disorder


Refers to impaired brain function due to damage or deterioration of brain tissue.