Mental Status Examination

The mental status examination is commonly known as MSE in different parts of the world. It is an important aspect of psychology or psychiatric world as your clinical assessment is based on your mental status examination. If you are a student of psychology or you have ever dealt with special persons or patients suffering from any psychological problem, then you might have heard about mental status examination before. Although there are a number of reviews about mental status examination all over the internet, but sometimes a lot of information is also not sufficient to know about mental status examination. Some of the reviews about mental status examination are quite complicated and confusing that you might not understand about mental status examination clearly, after going through them.

Mental Status Examination

This article is a contribution to those reviews about mental status examination, which provides you clear and understandable information about mental status examinations.

Generally, when you go to a psychiatric or psychologist you are being interviewed on the very first stage. This interview is done to take basic information about you, your family, and your environment. This interview is basically a preparation to assess your mental state further in mental status examination. Once, the psychologist is done with your interview, he takes you to the other stage of accessing your mental state – MSE!

Questions in Mental Status Examination

The mental status examination is an evaluation process of assessing the condition of your mind. It works same as the physical examination by any physician. Generally, mental status examination is based on several questions formally prepared by psychologists and the use of herbs supplements as well. But quite often, the answers of those questions are taken in an informal way, like in general discussions or simply by observing you during interview sessions. Different behaviors and attitude of a client are being measured in mental status examination. Usually this examination is based on seven major categories:

• Appearance
• Memory
• Speech
• Cognition
• Mood
• Thought Patterns
• Level of consciousness

General appearance deals with your eye contact, either it is indirect, fixed or no contact. Facial  expressions if they are smiling, responsive, worried, happy etc. Clothing, if you are nicely dressed or your dressing is untidy, trendy, neat, or worn. Your hygienic condition, body language and general accessibility that you are either friendly, confused, alert or anything else. Hence, general appearance deals with each and every aspect of your outer condition to measure your mental capabilities to maintain yourself.

In the same manner memory deals with your responsiveness towards past experiences. The speech section measures your speech including its quality, clarity and flow that either it is disorganized, low, hesitant or yelling. Your cognition examination, tells the level of your concentration towards different discussions and negotiations. It also determines your impulsive behavior and your ability to conclude different topics. If your suffer from a condition like vascular depression then it’s best to find relief from vascular depression beforehand. Hence your judgment and level of concentration is being measured in cognition section of mental status examination.

In this way, from the general appearance to the level of consciousness, mental status examination measures all the aspects of human behavior that determines your mental condition. Therefore, this evaluation test is of great importance to diagnose your disorder and to determine the level of mental ailment that you might be suffering from.