Mental Status Assessment

Front 1

affect

Back 1

emotional state observe during an evaluation or therapy session

Front 2

mood

Back 2

subjective feeling state either reported or inferred

Front 3

mental status assessment

Back 3

clinician's objective observations as well as subjective self report to obtain and record information on client's presenting affect, cognition and behavior to provide a clear picture 'snapshot' of present functioning

Front 4

mental status exam

Back 4

structured assessment used to assess cognitive status, instrument used to screen for cognitive impairment (i.e. dementia) over time

Front 5

stable affect

Back 5

normal/expected affective reactivity

Front 6

blunted affect

Back 6

minimal expression, minimal intensity of emotion

facial expression varies little

few physical gestures of emotion

minimal eye contact

speech is monotone or little vocal inflection

Front 7

flat affect

Back 7

more severe form of blunted affect, essentially no affective expression or animation

Front 8

constricted affect

Back 8

limited range of expressed emotion

may be intense and favorable (euphoric) or unfavorable (depressed, angry, hostile)

neutral, bland

Front 9

inappropriate "incongruent" affect

Back 9

discordance between the expressed emotion and what the individual is saying or what's being discussed

(ie, giggling when someone died)

Front 10

restricted affect

Back 10

form of inappropriate affect

affective expression varies little of the changing context of the conversation or interaction

Front 11

fixed affect

Back 11

affective expression does not vary at all

Front 12

labile affect (labile mood)

Back 12

abrupt, rapid, repeated shifts in the type and intensity of emotion

Front 13

pressured speech

Back 13

virtually continuous flow of accelerated speech that may be difficult or impossible to interrupt by the listener

Front 14

clang associations

Back 14

speech driven by the sounds of the words rather than the logic

Front 15

delusion

Back 15

false beliefs not explained by culture or education; individual sings to the belief despite evidence to the contrary or the weight of opinion

Front 16

hallucination

Back 16

false sensory perception that occurs int eh absence of a related sensory stimulus; can affect any of the sensory modalities

Front 17

depersonalization

Back 17

is a subjective experience of unreality in one's sense of self, while derealization is unreality of the outside world.

Front 18

derealiziation

Back 18

is a subjective experience of unreality of the outside world

Front 19

flight of ideas

Back 19

a rapid flow of thought, manifested by accelerated speech with abrupt changes from topic to topic: a symptom of some mental illnesses, especially manic disorder.

Front 20

illogical thinking

Back 20

Illogical thinking is drawing conclusions without proper or misinformed data.

Front 21

overvalued ideations

Back 21

fixed, dominating convictions

Front 22

circumstantially

Back 22

is the result of a non-linear thought pattern and occurs when the focus of a conversation drifts, but often comes back to the point. In circumstantiality, unnecessary details and irrelevant remarks cause a delay in getting to the point.

Front 23

preoccupation

Back 23

Thoughts which dwell on a particular topic or theme.

Front 24

obsession

Back 24

persistent, recurrent thought/urge/images that are experienced as obtrusive and unwanted

Front 25

neologism

Back 25

made up words that have meaning only to that individual

Front 26

ideas of reference

Back 26

belief that external events have a particular meaning for the person

Front 27

alogia

Back 27

aka 'poverty of speech', reduced output, content/variety

Front 28

derailment

Back 28

vague, diffuse, unfocused, fragmented, bizarre thoughts where main point of discourse is derailed or lost; loose associations

Front 29

catatonic

Back 29

bizarre, rigid posturing, stop responding to environment; may remain motionless and silent for long periods of time

Front 30

avolition

Back 30

apathy, impairment in goal-oriented behavior

Front 31

magical thinking

Back 31

is the attribution of causal or synchronistic relationships between actions and events which seemingly cannot be justified by reason and observation.

Front 32

perseveration

Back 32

repetition of the same for,d phrase or idea in response to different questions

Front 33

illusion

Back 33

a process involving an interaction of logical and empirical considerations.

Front 34

tangentiality

Back 34

responses only obliquely related or are completely unrelated

Front 35

incoherence

Back 35

speech is so disorganized that it resembles a 'word salad' of aphasia; not common