The mental status exam (MSE) is used to evaluate a patient's mental state through objective observation and subjective reports. It assesses factors like appearance, behavior, speech, mood, thought processes, perception, cognition, insight, and more. The MSE provides valuable information for diagnosis and treatment by describing normal and abnormal findings to understand a patient's baseline mental condition. It identifies symptoms that may indicate various mental disorders.

1. By: Mrs. Ekjot Kaur
Assistant Professor,SNS&R
Sharda University

2.  Nurse’s capacity to observe and describe the
behavior accurately can provide valuable
information about a patient and a patient’s
mental state.

3.  The mental status exam (MSE) is the
psychological equivalent of a physical exam
that describes the mental state and behavior
of the person being seen. It includes both
objective observation & subjective
description given by the patient.

4.  MSE provides information for diagnosis and
assessment of disorder and response to
treatment.
 It is important to ascertain what is normal for
the patient. For example:- some people
always speak fast!

6.  Appearance
 Facial expression
 Level of grooming
 Level of cleanliness
 Mode of entry
 Behaviour
 Co-operativeness

7.  Eye- to- eye contact
 Psychomotor activity
 Gesturing
 Other movements
 Compulsive acts
 Hallucinatory behavior

8.  INITIATION: Spontaneous/ speaks when
spoken to/ mute.
 REACTION TIME: normal/ delayed/ difficult to
assess.
 RATE: normal/ slow
 VOLUME: normal/ increased/ decreased.
 TONE: normal/ high pitch/ low pitch.
 RELEVENCE: fully relevant/ irrelevant.

9.  Subjective
 Objective
 Predominant mood state : irritate/ blunted/
anxious/ fearful/ panic/ aggressive.
 Appropriate : relevance to situation and
thought.

10. Thought is divided into:
Form of Content of
thought thought

11.  also known as stream of thought.
 a way person thinks.
 Form of thought can be logical or completely
illogical.

12.  Flight of ideas: thinking process is so rapid
that no idea is completed.
 Circumstantiality: many unnecessary details
are added to flow of thought before the final
goal is reached.

13.  Word salad: group of words that put together
randomly without logical connection.
 Incoherence: no sense can be extracted from
his speech.

14.  Tangential thinking: thinking process follows
a series of related topics but goal is not
reached.
 Blocking: sudden interruption in thought
process.
 Clang Association: Associative disturbance
person follow one word with another.

15.  Retardation: the initation and progress of
thought is very slow.
 Preservation: is involuntary and morbid
repetition of specific word or ideas.
 Neologism: person invents new words.

16.  Disorder of content of thought include
delusions, pre- occupation, obsessions and
compulsions, phobias.

17.  false beliefs which are irrational and not
shared by person.

18.  Delusion of grandeur
 Delusion of self accusation
 Delusion of persecution
 Delusion of reference
 Delusion of sin & guilt
 Delusion of poverty
 Delusion of nihilism
 Delusion of control
 Hypochondrical delusion

19.  Obsessions
 Phobias

20.  A process of awareness resulting from the act
of stimulus upon sense organs.

21.  ILLUSION : is subjective perversion of an
objective content. i.e. the subject himself
puts wrong meaning to the subject.
 HALLUCINATION: defined as a sensory
experience in the absence of a stimulus or an
object.

22.  Auditory hallucinations
 Visual hallucinations
 Olfactory hallucination
 Gustatory hallucinations
 Tactile hallucinations

23.  DEJA VU: a subjective feeling that an
experience, which is occurring for the first
time, has been experienced before.
 JAMAIS VU: failure to recognize events that
have been encountered before.

24.  Consciousness: conscious/ cloudy/
unconscious.
 Orientation: time, place and person.
 Attention: normally aroused/ aroused with
difficulty. Checked by: digit forward, digit
backward

25.  Concentration: normal or distract.
Concentration is checked by different
methods. Like – calling names of month
(backwards)
Names of weekdays(backwards)
 Memory: immediate, recent and remote
memory.
 Intelligence: is includes general fund of
information.

26.  Abstraction: is multidimensional thinking
with ability to use metaphors appropriately.
 -similarities between paired objects
 - dissimilarities b/w paired objects
 Judgment: ability to camparing and
evaluating alternatives for the purpose of
deciding on a course of action.

27.  Is awareness of one’s own mental condition.
Person who are aware of their illness and
seek treatment are said to have insight.