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The mental status examination is usually denoted as MSE in psychiatric practice. It is the test of mental abilities to measure the level of insanity or abnormality of a person. Hence, the mental functioning of a client is then determined in the process of mental status examination. Psychiatrist takes your mental test same as any physician examines your body to diagnose your physical ailment. There are basically the following areas which are measured in mental status examination:
- General appearance: it determines the general description of an individual including its clothing, odor, eye contact, movements, attitude etc.
- Mood: it figures out your attitude, emotions, feelings, and behavior.
- Thinking patterns: This measures your thought processes that either they are violent, calm, logical, disorganized, or abstract.
- Memory: disposes your ability to recall past or recent memories.
- Cognition: determines your ability to evaluate your own self and your abilities to identify your own strength and weaknesses.
- Insight: refers your realization about the nature of your illness, its complexity, and severity.
- Speech: it measures the quality of your speech; it is disorganized, clear, low, whispering or yelling.
Mental Status Examination Purpose
In this context, mental status examination is an important tool of psychiatric practice to diagnose the mental illnesses in patients. The effects of mental status examination are very favorable and helpful to begin further psychological treatment and also post-traumatic stress disorder relief remedies. However, the effects of mental status examination can be clearly seen on client’s mental health. Once the psychiatrist starts taking history of the client, he feels himself important and considerate. Therefore, the effects of mental status examination are quite positive most of the time. However, sometimes, there are patients who actually avoid giving interviews and histories in that case it takes longer than the actual time limit to access and evaluate their mental health.
Uses of a Mental Status Examination
However, there are a number of uses of a mental status examination. We cannot deny the uses of a mental status examination as it is a foremost step of psychiatric practice and an important tool of psychologists as well to know their clients. Besides helping in psychiatric treatment and clinical assessment definition there are several other uses of a mental status examination as well. For example,
- It helps to carry a one-to-one conversation between psychiatrist and client.
- It helps to take many answers to complicated questions in an informal manner.
- It is useful for building a rapport between psychiatrist and client.
- It figures out many hidden qualities and complexities of a patient in a quite hidden and lighter manner.
Concluding the discussion, mental status examination is an important part of psychiatric practice. It is widely used by psychiatrists all over the world. It does not require any screening or mind tests. You can just verbally take all the essential information in quite an informal manner. It is also a quicker way of evaluating the progress of a patient during the treatment. However, an interview is required including the patient’s history and his family background to assess his mental functioning in a more appropriate manner. Some psychologist also recommends taking a clinical history of a patient along with family history so that it will become easier for the psychologist to interpret client’s mental functioning more accurately. It is because of the fact that many psychiatric illnesses are often accompanied by physical ailments.
