MSE

Question 1

What are the different sections of the MSE?

Answer 1

Appearance/ Behaviour
Speech
Mood
Affect
Thoughts
Perception
Insight
Judgeent
Memory
Concentration
Orientation
Risk

Question 2

What aspects of a patients appearance should you comment on?

Answer 2

Hygiene
Clothing
Weight
Age
Grooming
Signs of disease/ or difficulties (e.g. scars)
Objects brought with them

Question 3

What aspects of a patients behaviour should you comment on?

Answer 3

Engagement/ rapport
Eye contact
Facial expression
Body language
Psychomotor activity (retardation, agitation, tremors ect)
Abnormal movement

Question 4

What aspect of speech should you comment on?

Answer 4

Rate
Quantity
Tone
Volume
Fluency/ Rhythm

Question 5

What is psychomotor retardation?

Answer 5

Main symptom of depression: Slowing down of mental and physical activities

Question 6

What is affect?

Answer 6

Immediately expressed and observed emotion (e.g. facial expression and demeanour)

Question 7

What is mood?

Answer 7

Predominant subjective internal state

Question 8

Difference between mood and affect?

Answer 8

Mood is what the patient tells you, affect is what you observe

Question 9

What aspects of affect should you comment on?

Answer 9

Apparent emotion
Range and mobility of affect (e.g. alters throughout interview)
Intensity
Congruency with stated mood or words

Question 10

What should be commented on about a patients thoughts?

Answer 10

Speed
Flow/ Coherence
Content
Possession

Question 11

What is thought form?

Answer 11

The processing and organisation of thoughts

Question 12

What are circumstantial thoughts?

Answer 12

When the thought includes lots of irrelevant and unnecessary details but eventually come back to the point.

Question 13

What are tangential thoughts?

Answer 13

Digression from the subject without coming back to it (off on a tangent)

Question 14

What is flight of ideas?

Answer 14

Fast, pressured speech. Ideas run into one another. Hard to follow

Question 15

What is thought blocking?

Answer 15

Sudden cessation of thought

Question 16

What is perseveration?

Answer 16

Repetition of a particular response (e.g. word, phrase, gesture)

Question 17

What are neologisms?

Answer 17

Words the patient has made up

Question 18

What is word salad?

Answer 18

String of words without relation to one another

Question 19

What are delusions?

Answer 19

Firm, fixed beliefs based on irrational grounds.

Question 20

What are persecutory delusions?

Answer 20

When a patient believes someone/ a group is trying to harm them

Question 21

What are ideas of reference?

Answer 21

When the individual incorrectly believes specific events relates to them (e.g. the news)

Question 22

What are obsessions?

Answer 22

Thoughts/ images or impulses that occur repeatedly and feel out of the persons control (patient aware they are irrational)

Question 23

What are compulsions?

Answer 23

Repetitive behaviours that the patient feels compelled to perform despite the irrationality

Question 24

What are overvalued ideas?

Answer 24

Solitary, abnormal belief that is neither delusional nor obsessional but dominates the persons life (e.g. body dysmorphia in anorexia)

Question 25

What are the different types of abnormalities of thought posession/ alienation?

Answer 25

Thought insertion Thought withdrawal Thought broadcasting

Question 26

What is thought insertion?

Answer 26

Belief that thoughts can be inserted into the patients mind

Question 27

What is thought withdrawal?

Answer 27

Belief that thoughts can be removed from the patients mind

Question 28

What is thought broadcasting?

Answer 28

Belief that others can hear the patients thoughts

Question 29

What is perception in the MSE?

Answer 29

The organisation, identification and interpretation of sensory information to understand the world

Question 30

What are the different abnormalities of perception?

Answer 30

Hallucinations Pseudo-hallucinations Illusions Depersonalisation Derealisation

Question 31

What are hallucinations?

Answer 31

Sensory perception without any external stimulation of the relevant sense (e.g. hears voices)

Question 32

What are pseudo-hallucinations?

Answer 32

Same as hallucinations but the patient knows it is not real

Question 33

What are illusions?

Answer 33

The misinterpretation of an external stimulus (e.g. mistaking a shadow for a person)

Question 34

What is depersonalisation?

Answer 34

The patient feels that they are no longer their 'true' self and are someone different or strange

Question 35

What is derealisation?

Answer 35

A sense that the world around them is not a true reality

Question 36

How do you assess a persons cognition?

Answer 36

See if they are orientated in time, place and person See what their attention span/ concentration levels are like See what their short term memory is like

Question 37

What is insight?

Answer 37

The ability of the patient to understand their problem

Question 38

What is judgement?

Answer 38

The ability of the patient to make sound decisions

Question 39

How do you assess risk?

Answer 39

Ask if they are experiencing any thought of harming themselves or others

Question 40

What is delusional perception?

Answer 40

When a patient gives a false meaning to a true perception (e.g. may think that a traffic light turning red means martians have arrived)

Question 41

What is thought echo?

Answer 41

When a patient has a hallucination of hearing aloud their own thoughts after thinking them

Question 42

What is concrete thinking?

Answer 42

Literal thinking - based on what you can see, hear and feel in the moment

Question 43

What is loosening of association?

Answer 43

Lack of connection between ideas

Question 44

What is confabulation?

Answer 44

Where a patient generates a false memory without the intention of deceit (common in dementia)

Question 45

What is somatic passivity?

Answer 45

Experience of bodily sensations (actions, thoughts or emotions) imposed by an external agency

Question 46

What is deliriu?

Answer 46

A worsening or change in a person's mental state that happens suddenly. Usually confused and disorientated

Question 47

What is catatonia?

Answer 47

A state in which someone is awake but does not seem to respond to other people and their environment

Question 48

What is poverty of speech?

Answer 48

Lack of conversation

Question 49

What is pressure of speech?

Answer 49

When you talk faster than normal usually without pauses

Question 50

What is anhedonia?

Answer 50

The loss of the ability to feel pleasure

Question 51

What is flattening of affect?

Answer 51

When you feel emotions but showing very little visually

Question 52

What is incongruity of affect?

Answer 52

Lack of correlation between affect and stated mood (common in schizophrenia)

Question 53

What is blunting of affect?

Answer 53

Decreased ability to express emotion through your facial expressions, tone and physical movements

Question 54

What is Belle indifference?

Answer 54

(Beautiful ignorance) Paradoxical absence of psychological distress despite having a serious medical illness

Question 55

What are conversion disorders?

Answer 55

Psychiatric disorder where your sensory or motor function is affected but inconsistent with known neurological diseases (Functional neurological disorder)

Question 56

What is stereotypy?

Answer 56

The persistent repetition of an act for no obvious purpose