Mental Status NSG 200

What are the four main areas of the mental status exam?

Appearance, Behavior, Cognition, Thought process

What are some of the screeing tools for mental status?

MMSE, Edinburgh postnatal depression scale, holemes and rate stress scale

What does MMSE stand for?

Mini-Mental State Examiniation

When assesing appearance what are we looking for?

Posture, body movements, dress, grooming and hygine

When assesing behavior what are we looking for?

Level of Consciousness, Delirium, Dementia, Facial Expression, Speech, Mood and Affect

What is delirium?

Acute change in mental status when one is usually confused

When assesing cognitive functioning what are we looking for?

Orientation, attention span, recent memory, remote memory

What is a test for cognitive function that one can do?

Four unrelated words test

What is the four unrelated words test?

Where you give someone 4 unrelated words and ask them to repeat these back to you in 3-5 minutes, testing their memory.

When assesing thought processing what are we looking for?

Thought content, Perceptions, Suicidal thoughts