Mental Status Exam

Lability

Sudden shifts in emotional state; unpredictable.

Broad Affect

Wide range of emotional states and expressions.

Mood

A conscious state of mind or predominant emotion.

Impulse

Sudden, forceful, irresistible urges to do something that may violate the rights of others or conflict.

Incongruent

Inconsistent with.

Obsession

Repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images that are intrusive, unwanted.

Trigger

Something that affects your emotional state, often significantly, by causing extreme overwhelm or distress.

Hallucination

Occurrence of a sight, sound, touch, smell or taste without external stimulus to a sensory organ.

Provocative

Refers to actions, stimuli, or situations that elicit emotional, behavioral, or cognitive responses from individuals.

Insight

The act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively.

Congruent

Consistent with.

Tremor

Involuntary quivering movement.

Euthymia

The state of living without mood disturbances.

Illusion

Perceptual experiences in which information arising from “real” external stimuli leads to an incorrect perception, or false impression, of the object or event from which the stimulation comes.

Judgment

The capacity to recognize relationships, draw conclusions from evidence, and make critical evaluations of events and people.

Flat Affect

A type of affect that presents with severe reduction in emotion; monotonous voice; lack of facial expression.

Euphoria

Feeling of intense excitement and happiness.

Disorganized Speech

Incoherent speech.

Misperception

Perceptual abnormality; misinterpretation of real experiences.

Resilience

The process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences.

Anger

An emotion characterized by tension and hostility arising from frustration, real or imagined injury by another, or perceived injustice.