MENTAL STATUS EXAM TRAINING
Mental Status Exam Training
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MENTAL STATUS EXAM TRAINING
Initial Post
The psychiatrists use the DSM criteria when assessing a patient’s presenting symptoms to assist in
formulating a treatment plan. Best practice includes incorporating a holistic approach when providing
care. What are the ethical considerations of focusing on classification? Do you think classification
can affect the patient’s treatment outcome?
Please read!the following video transcript and write up a mental status of the patient
Mental Status Exam Training, Part 1 - Affect and Mood
Video Transcript
Thom Field: In this first section of the Mental Status Examination, we will learn
about affect and mood. My name is Thom Field and I produced and narrated of this
training series. Let's look at the overview. We will learn via a scaffolding process. In
this section, we learn about affect and mood. In the next section, we learn about
thought process and review affect and mood. In the third section, we learn about
memory and review affect and mood and thought process, and so on.
Included in each section are some embedded guided practice exercises. There is
an end of training test at the conclusion of the eight sections. I encourage you to
follow the handout as we progress. You can use scrap paper for guided practice if
you'd like, there's also a sheet provided for this. As view the video case studies
during guided practice, there's going to be occasions when the client does not
manifest an element of the mental status examination. In those cases it is okay to
indicate, unable to assess.
Let's look at affect. Affect is defined as an observable emotional expression, how
the client presents to others. Affect has two features, range of affect and
congruence. Congruence has two parts, congruent and incongruent, also known as
superficial. Range of affect spans full or broad, which is known as normal or typical,
to blunted or flat, which is known as abnormal or atypical. Full or broad affect is
described as a full range of expression, again, considered typical or normal. Let's
look at an example.
Speaker 2: It's just been such a blur. We have so much going on at work. It's a lot
of pressure really. We have this safety inspection coming up, so we're having to get
all our files in order because part of that's an audit, and then you're checking all the
machinery to make sure everything's up to code and making sure everybody's
training is up-to-date. It's just been a lot of work and frankly, I've just been feeling a
little overwhelmed and the days have been kind of running together.
Thom Field: This client describes feeling overwhelmed at work because of the
pressure she's under at this impending safety inspection. Internal emotional state is
one of anxiety, of stress, of worry. And this is manifested in her external expression.
