Psychiatric Interview

Psychiatric Interviewing for Third-Year residents

By: Gerald P. Perman, M.D.

Introduction

Stimulated by Scott Schwartz’s recent paper in the Forum on “Heuristic Techniques for Teaching Psychodynamics” (Vol. 46, No. 2), I would like to present a paper I wrote for third-year medical students doing a psychiatry clerkship at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. This paper was originally written to be read by the

medical students, and members of the Academy are welcome to make copies for medical students whose interviews they supervise. I want to gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions made by Julia Frank, M.D., on a draft of this paper, some of which have been incorporated into the final version.

I wanted to help these clerkship students organize their thinking about psychiatric interviewing before they met with patients on the psychiatric inpatient service. Giving medical students the opportunity to interview psychiatric patients under supervision allows them to develop rapport with psychiatric patients and to improve their interviewing skills. The interviewing techniques that are learned in this setting also should be useful to the students in their work with patients in general as it is assumed that most of the students will

not be specializing in psychiatry.

The weekly interviewing supervision usually takes place in monthly blocks of time, and each of the two students usually has the opportunity to interview two patients. I recommend that the student not take notes during the interview since the emphasis in this supervision is more on learning “how to” conduct an interview and establishing rapport than on remembering every detail the patient recounts. Patients to be interviewed are identified, and permission is obtained from the unit’s attending psychiatrist or the patient’s psychiatric resident physician the day before the interview. The two students meet with the supervisor to confirm that the patient has consented to be interviewed, and the student interviewer briefly explains why the patient is in the hospital. Any patient is considered a “good interview subject” regardless of diagnosis since all patients are unique human beings with their own personality characteristics, vulnerabilities and strengths and with whom we can attempt to relate. One student conducts the interview for about 25 minutes, followed by a few minutes for questions

by the other student and supervisor. I suggest that the interviewer takes a seat facing a clock (or watch placed on a desk) so the patient will not feel rushed by the interviewer’s repeated glances at a wristwatch. After the interview has ended the patient is returned to the nursing station, and the students and supervisor find a private place to discuss the interview. Establishing the Doctor Patient Relationship Rapport is established by taking steps to make the patient feel understood and accepted. There are several simple things a student can do to begin to establish this rapport.

If the patient is in a hospital room, approach the door and knock but do not enter. Announce yourself, wait for a reply, and then ask for permission to come in. The patient’s hospital room is also his bedroom, and the patient will feel respected by this courtesy. After you have obtained permission to enter, introduce yourself, your fellow student and the supervisor, explain the purpose of the interview, and again ask for the patient’s consent to be interviewed. I suggest telling patients that, in addition to providing a teaching service to us, they may find this opportunity to talk with another person helpful. To show respect for the patient’s time and schedule, let the patient know approximately how long the interview will last. Along with these first efforts at establishing rapport, a friendly smile goes a long way.

Some Differences Between Psychiatric and General Medical Interviewing The psychiatric interview bears a number of similarities to the traditional medical interview. We take a history and pay attention to the signs and symptoms of illness. We have a template in our mind that we attempt to complete as we elicit the Chief Complaint (CC), the History of the Present Illness (HPI), the Past Medical and Psychiatric History (PMPH), and the Personal and Social History (PSH), and we perform a Mental Status Examination (MSE).

Our approach to gathering this information differs, however, from the typical medical interview. Psychiatric patients often cannot tell us in as straightforward a manner what is bothering them. In addition, letting them “ramble on” during the interview serves several important functions that will be described later. In medical interviewing, we often pursue a direct course from the CC to the HPI to the PMPH, etc. Patients generally cooperate because they are eager to seek relief from their pain and other symptoms. With psychiatric patients we usually cannot steer such a linear course. Psychiatric patients may have considerable difficulty pinpointing exactly what is bothering them. There are many variables that contribute to a patient’s psychiatric illness, including genetic vulnerabilities, developmental history, the patient’s family environment, cultural influences, toxic or metabolic factors, current life circumstances, and even the patient’s vision of a future that may not have been achieved. In addition, an altered mental status may interfere with the patient’s ability to provide a clear and straightforward history.

Patients may also be ambivalent about giving up their symptoms because their illness itself provides an adaptation to their life difficulties. For example, a patient’s decision not to go into work because of depression may also represent a passive-aggressive expression of unconscious anger toward a disliked supervisor. Patients may be embarrassed about their symptoms and may attempt to conceal information to make a good impression. For example, the day after her admission, a woman in her mid-50’s said she had been admitted for “anxiety” and denied ever drinking more than two or three drinks per day. However, she had a ruddy complexion and was tremulous. The day before, while in the emergency room, she had admitted to drinking a liter of alcohol a day, and her blood alcohol level at the time was 0.28 mg/dL.

Her boyfriend had died the previous month of alcohol-related liver disease. Another major difference between medical history taking and psychiatric interviewing is the relationship between diagnosis and treatment. When a patient presents with symptoms of appendicitis, the doctor first makes a diagnosis and then proceeds with treatment. In psychiatry the distinction between diagnosis and treatment is not so well defined. The diagnostic interview itself is often therapeutic; patients may feel temporarily relieved of their symptoms by the end of an empathic interview. We sometimes need to meet with a patient more than once to arrive at an accurate psychiatric diagnosis, so early on we often need to tolerate a higher level of diagnostic uncertainty.

We also encourage patients to become more active participants in the psychiatric interview process than in the usual medical interview. By using open-ended questions we allow patients to tell the story of their illness in their own words. For example, asking, “Have you been sleeping well?” would typically generate a “yes” or “no” response. Instead we ask the patient, “Tell me what your sleep has been like.” This sort of question increases the validity of the information we obtain, enhances rapport, helps patients learn more about themselves and is a first step toward a patient’s later involvement in psychotherapy. As we can imagine, there are a number of reasons why a patient might answer “yes” or “no” to closed-ended questions apart from giving the correct answer. Patients can agree out of politeness and disagree out of a passive-aggressive effort to frustrate. Patients may dissimulate when asked open-ended questions, but the validity of responses tends to be greater, all other things being equal, when they are encouraged to provide an elaborated, rather than a “yes” or “no” answer to questions.

We also pay particular attention to the emotions the patient is experiencing during the interview. When a patient’s anxiety or sadness seems to interfere with the history-taking process, rather than ignoring or immediately attempting to relieve these feelings, we call them to the patient’s attention and ask to hear more about them. Watching a patient’s eyes tear up, we might comment, “You seem to be feeling sad right now. Could you talk about that?” Paying attention to immediate feelings enhances rapport by making the patient feel understood and helps relieve the patient’s emotional distress. We generally want to avoid discussion of diagnostic labeling with the patient. Over-emphasis on labeling can make the patient can feel like a specimen and can make the interview a dry, intellectual experience.

Transference and Countertransference

Another unique aspect of the psychiatric interview is the attention we give to the patient’s attitudes and feelings towards the interviewer, and our feelings towards the patient. One of Sigmund Freud’s greatest discoveries was the observation that we bring feelings and attitudes towards people who have been important to us from past relationships into current relationships. For example, patients who have had warm, positive experiences with doctors in the past will be more inclined to be cooperative and forthcoming with doctors and medical students in the present (i.e., they will show a positive transference). If we detect and address negative transference attitudes with patients early on, we have a better chance of successfully proceeding with the rest of the interview.

In his book, Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice (Third edition, American Psychiatric Press: Washington, DC, 2000) Glen Gabbard, M.D., gives the example of a patient who was inhibited about talking to a psychiatrist. When the psychiatrist asked if any of his actions or comments made it difficult for the patient to talk, the patient confided that he believed that psychiatrists were mind-

readers so that he needed to be cautious. The psychiatrist replied humorously, “I’m afraid we’re not that good.” Both laughed, and the patient found it easier to open up. How the patient relates to us in the interview also sheds light on how he relates to others in general, as well as how he related to parenting figures during the formative years of his personality development.

The other side of the transference coin involves our reactions to the patient, or our countertransference. In a traditional medical interview the doctor’s feelings towards the patient are seen as annoyances that interfere with the assessment of the patient’s illness. The physician usually suppresses these feelings in the service of maintaining objectivity and proceeding with the examination. For the psychiatric interview, such feelings can provide important diagnostic clues. Our feelings are based both on what the patient realistically evokes in us and would evoke in most anyone and who the patient unwittingly reminds us of from our past. The first, or realistic, reaction to the patient can add to our impression about important diagnostic issues. For example, the presence of a thought disorder may be apparent when we are frustrated by a patient’s circumstantial responses to our questions, and depression when we find ourselves feeling sad. We may learn about a patient’s repeated difficulty establishing platonic relationships when the seductive patient evokes our sexual arousal. We try to minimize the effect of the second component of our reaction to the patient, the thoughts and feelings that related to our past relationships with important others, by monitoring and assessing our own thoughts and feelings during the course of the interview.

Taking the History

Probably the three most important words in psychiatric interviewing are “Tell me about....” Asking questions in this manner encourages the patient to tell his story in his own words. Engaging the patient as an active participant in the interview adds to the validity of the history. To elicit the Chief Complaint, we usually begin by asking patients to tell us (“Tell me about...”) what led to their coming to the hospital. As the CC is elaborated, we find ourselves learning about the History of the Present Illness. As we hear more about this aspect of the history, we find ourselves increasingly thinking about what the patient has not yet told us and we still want to know. For example, after we hear about the onset and evolution of a patient’s depression, including depressed mood, anhedonia (not taking pleasure in activities), and disturbed sleep, we might note to ourselves that we have not yet heard about the presence or absence of suicidal ideation. When the patient has come to the end of this unstructured description of depression, we can then inquire about suicidal thoughts and plans.

For example, to assess a patient’s suicidal potential, rather than asking “Have you ever been suicidal?” (although there is nothing inherently wrong with this question), we would do better to use an open-ended query, such as, “Tell me about times you might have felt that life was not worth living or you felt suicidal.” The second form of the question would prompt the patient to give a more active, elaborated, and therefore usually more valid answer such as, “Oh, I’ve never been suicidal” or “It was something I was thinking about before I came to the hospital.” We might then respond with, “Tell me more about the suicidal thoughts you had been having,” to learn more. Just as we auscultate the fluid level of a pleural effusion, we want to find out the depth of a patient’s depression and other psychological distress. Brief attentive silences can also allow and encourage patients to further elaborate his or her story.

It is often difficult for psychiatric patients to describe exactly why they became ill and needed to come to the hospital. Asked directly, patients will often respond, “Nothing has changed in my life,” or, “I don’t know why I started to become depressed.” The psychological and psychosocial precipitants are hidden from both us and the patient. Rather than vigorously pursuing a direct line of questioning, I have found it more helpful to ask the patient to “Tell me about...” what was going on in your life around the time that you started to become depressed (for example). In this way, the patient does not have to make a judgment about the contributing factors and allows us to decide for ourselves what these may have been. For example, a postal employee recently admitted to the hospital for ECT could not understand why he started to become depressed a few months earlier. When asked what was going on in his life at the time, he said that he was working at his “usual boring job, sorting mail at a particularly dangerous machine.” It turned out that he had been feeling trapped at his job for some time but felt he could not leave because of his seniority and relatively good pay and benefits. It was also a few weeks after September 11, 2001, that he had started to became ill. We follow unstructured parts of the HPI with more structured (closed-ended) questions that allow us to characterize the sleep difficulties, appetite changes, loss of libido, or whatever else would help us arrive at a descriptive diagnosis.

In taking a Past Psychiatric and Medical History I often add the phrase, “in your lifetime,” to my questions. For example, I will ask, “What serious medical problems have you had in your lifetime?” (to cover both current and past medical problems) or, “Tell me about each of your previous psychiatric hospitalizations?” We might want to avoid asking such questions out of concern that the patient will give inordinately lengthy answers. In my experience this fear is almost always unfounded. Except for patients with some sort of thought disorder, most are aware of the limited time available during the interview and provide relatively succinct answers to such questions.

This same approach applies to the Personal and Social History. Most patients respond to questions such as, “Please tell me about your family when you were growing up,” and offer brief meaningful, summaries of their childhood and family. A discussion of the family history also offers an opportunity to assess for the presence of “identity diffusion,” an important consideration in making the diagnosis of a personality disorder. One aspect identity diffusion is that the person has not formed solid psychological boundaries between themselves and other people. Therefore when asked to describe another person they will invariably describe the person in terms of themselves. For example, a patient without identity diffusion who is asked to describe his mother, might say, “My mother is 82 years old. She lives alone. She is friendly. She is very involved with her church, and she has made an excellent adjustment since the death of my father two years ago.” A patient with identity diffusion might respond, “Every time I talk to my mother she is into my business, and we don’t seem to do anything but argue. She makes me feel bad all the time.” In the second example, it is hard to tell where the patient’s identity leaves off and where that of his mother begins.

Distinctions between the different sections of the psychiatric interview are often not cut and dried (we could say that we allow for some identity diffusion here!). The Past Psychiatric and Medical History may well be a crucial part of the History of the Present Illness, or the Alcohol and Substance Use history may be found in the CC, the HPI, the PPMH as well as the PSH. Wherever it falls in the interview, taking a History of Alcohol and Substance Use is always important since substance abuse is frequently a comorbid if not the primary psychiatric illness. I have often found it helpful to ask, “How much can you drink at a sitting?” Patients who are able to have more than two drinks are more vulnerable to develop alcohol-related problems than those who limit themselves to less. Although a drink or two a night might contribute to depression, anxiety or sleep problems, when we hear that the patient consumes more than two drinks, we should inquire further about memory black-outs (alcohol-related amnestic episodes), arrests for driving while intoxicated, morning tremors, etc.

The Mental Status Examination:

The mental status examination (MSE) is a description of the patient’s mental state at the time of the interview. Sometimes we hear about performing a “formal or structured mental status examination,” that is, assessing specific areas of mental functioning through structured questioning apart from the rest of the interview. For example, we may ask patients to subtract seven from one hundred serially to examine their ability to concentrate, or we may ask them to explain one of several well-known proverbs to assess their ability to think abstractly. Although these may be crucial aspects of a psychiatric interview with some patients, for the purpose of this supervised situation we will weave mental status questions into the fabric of the interview. Some of the important components of the MSE include the patient’s appearance, speech and psychomotor functioning, memory and orientation, affect, mood, thought processes, hallucinations and delusions, and insight and judgment. Appearance includes how the patient is dressed, hairstyle, weight and height, how the patient is groomed, how make-up is applied, the presence of piercings, scars, bruises, etc.

All of these elements contribute to a statement about the patient’s mental status. For example, a patient dressed in dark somber colors may be telling us that she is feeling depressed (rather than hypomanic), or she may be wearing colors typical of her Eastern European country of origin with less implication for her mood. The patient’s speech can tell us a number of things about the patient’s mental state. We should listen for an accent or speech impediment. The volume of speech often reflects mood, and a tremulous voice can reflect sedative withdrawal. We look for psychomotor retardation or agitation (motor activity influenced by the psyche), tics or tremors, and abnormalities of gait and posture. Gross neurological abnormalities are important since we are interested in how the patient’s mind and body are affected by his brain. We listen for how well the patient is oriented, to person (knowing who they are), place and time, which is usually apparent in the course of history-taking and may be altered by delirium and other disorders that affect the sensorium. Disturbances of immediate, short-term and remote memory can also be detected in the usual course of history taking.

Assessment of the patient’s thought processes refers to “how” the patient thinks, apart from the content of the thoughts. That is, we are interested in how the patient’s thoughts connect up with one another. Giving patients the opportunity to “ramble on” by using open-ended questions gives us the opportunity to make observations about their patterns of associations and to assess whether there is a thought disorder. Loose associations (when thoughts do not seem to be connected to one another), circumstantial thinking (in which patients give us much more information than we asked about), and tangential thinking (when patients consistently do not answer what they have been asked) become readily apparent. Impoverished thinking may be a sign of dementia, markedly slowed thinking depression, or very rapid thinking mania or a patient high on cocaine. We can also detect unconscious thought processes based on how ideas are temporally connected to one another. For example, a patient may begin by telling us how difficult it was to find the interview room, then that he will have to end the interview early because he wants to see a favorite television show, followed by a complaint that he is thirsty and needs to leave for a drink of water. He is letting us know that he does not want to be here talking to us! If we address this issue with the patient, that is, interpret the patient’s wish not to talk to us, we may hear about his hostility towards psychiatrists as well as his need to disavow these feelings, and we may then be able to proceed more easily with the rest of the interview. Slips of the tongue may give us glimpses into the unconscious. A pregnant patient ambivalent about becoming a mother might say, “I don’t want to be a psychiatric parent – I mean patient!” We are interested in the patient’s judgment and insight into his illness, both of which can help us assess the patient’s ability to follow through with treatment recommendations.

Perceptual disturbances such as auditory or visual hallucinations are often evident when we ask patients why they are seeking treatment. The content of a patient’s hallucinations may inform us about current and past conflicts as well as the patient’s suicidal and homicidal potential. Auditory hallucinations are more characteristic of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, while visual and tactile hallucinations are more likely to occur with alcohol and other substance abuse and withdrawal.

Affect and mood have been described differently. First, affect has been described as the observed feeling state, usually reflected in the patient’s face, whereas mood is the subjective emotional state that the patient describes to us. Alternatively, affect is to mood as weather is to climate; affect is a temporary or fleeting emotional state and mood is a sustained state. A depressed patient will often show a constricted or blunted affect, whereas a hypomanic patient will exhibit euphoric or expansive affect. A patient with schizophrenia may have inappropriate or flat affect. A patient’s mood can be sad, elated, annoyed, anxious, fearful, grandiose, etc. Just as we try to characterize the patient’s pain in a medical interview, we want to characterize the patient’s mood in terms of intensity, duration, and quality. Affect and mood can also shed light on the patient’s psychological defense mechanisms. An excessively jocular mood may serve to deny feelings of grief and anger; stoicism caused by isolation of affect may defend against intense emotional pain; or contempt and hostility as a manifestation of splitting can reflect the patient’s efforts to keep good and bad feelings towards others apart.

Ending the Interview

Toward the end of the interview, it is respectful to let the patient know that you will be stopping shortly. In addition to asking the patient’s permission for the other student and supervisor to ask a question or two, it is helpful to briefly summarize what problems the patient has sought help for and then to comment on the fact that the patient has taken a positive step by coming to the hospital. We try to convey understanding, respect, acknowledgment, and hope. The power of the doctor-patient relationship is extraordinary; apply it when indicated!

After the Interview

After we have returned the patient to the nursing station and said goodbye, we will briefly discuss what we have observed and experienced. We are interested in the student’s reactions to talking with the patient, why a student asked some questions and perhaps did not ask others, what other ways questions might have been asked, etc. We will review aspects of the mental status examination, and we will try to arrive at a brief biopsychosocial formulation, or explanation, of the patient’s psychiatric illness. We understand that during these brief psychiatric interviews, we will obtain a history that is less than complete, but we hope that during the four-week rotation, students will have learned some psychiatry, will have improved their interviewing skills, and will have had a reasonably good time along the way.

Some books that may help medical students learn about psychiatric interviewing and assessment include:

Akhtar, S., Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992

Gabbard, G., Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, Third Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 2000

MacKinnon, R.A., and Michels, R.. The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice.Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders, 1971

Menninger, K.A., Mayman, M., and Pruyser, P.W., A Manual for Psychiatric Case Study, Second Edition. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1962

Dr. Gerald Perman is Clinical Professor in Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.

Correspondence to: 2424 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Ste. 100, Washington, DC 20037

ID: Name/Age/Sex/Race/Marital status/Children/Employment status/Financial support/Referral source

CC: In Pt’s own words and that of the referral source.

HPI: Primary medical problem for which Pt was admitted to hospital. Sequence of events that led to the hospitalization. Pt or referral source seeking this Psychiatric consult. Why now? Pertinent positive or negatives.

PAST PSY Hx: Any previous Psychiatric Dx, Tx in past, IP Psych hosp? Does the Pt have a primary Psychiatrist? Was Tx effective or not? Psychotropic meds? Anything complicating Tx. Tx resistance or noncompliance? Any, personality d/o, mood d/o, mania, psychoses. Jail/rehab.

Suicide history: attempts (first/last/total), means, plans or intent, or command hallucinations. If suicidality is the cause of admission, further details of event will go under HPI, need to include precipitating factors, suicide note, likelihood of being found, giving away belongings, perceived seriousness, thought the Pt had in mind when making the attempt.

Screening for psychiatric d/o that are not the cause of initial contact. Depression:anxiety, mood d/o:bipolor vs psychoses. Acute alcohol withdrawal delirium vs bipolar vs schizophrenia.

Violence history: Violence towards others, current thoughts, or command hallucinations. Legal problems related to violence. On probation or parole, or prisoner? Victim of assault? Does the Pt know the assailant? Is the Pt. seeking revenge?

Substance use: Tobacco, alcohol (CAGE), drugs, prescription, opiates. Fist, heaviest, last use. Clean time, recent, longest. Rehab/abstinence periods. Gambling problems.

Trauma history: History of childhood trauma or adult trauma (physical, sexual, accidents, natural disasters), recent new of terminal illness. SAFE. Domestic violence. Weapons at home. Symptoms of stress disorder (acute and PTSD).

Allergies:

Medications:

PMH: Problem list upto current admission.

PSH:

OB&GYN:

FH: 1°, 2° relatives dx of mental illnesses, substance abuse, criminal or antisocial behavior, suicide or suicide attempts. Other medical problems.

SH: Place born, family structure including ethnicity and socioeconomic status, school, behavior or learning problems in school, relationship with family/friends. Any conduct d/o or childhood psychiatric illness H/o physical or sexual abuse. Adolescence. College/military history. Marital history, children. Any major life events (positive and negatives). Current significant other. Work hx, source of income? Home situation. Supportive or unsupportive home environment. ADL, IADL. Appetite, sleep and sexual history. STIs.

Assets: What assets can be used in the Tx and recovery of the Pt? Includes physical health, stable income, living situation, education, supportive family, temperament, intelligence, insurance, strong therapeutic alliance with physician.

Legal History: A legal history is relevant in an initial psychiatric interview if the interviewer infers that it may be important for the diagnostic impression. To omit this inquiry because it is a difficult subject is an error if it turns out that the diagnostic formulation hinges on this aspect of the history. The content of this history can include lawsuits, divorce and custody disputes, bankruptcy, arrests, convictions, and imprisonment

Mental Status Examination

General Appearance, body habitus, WD/WN or cachexic, debilitated, posture, dress, grooming and its appropriateness, personal hygiene, facial expression, manners and moods, body language, eye contact. Psychomotor movement and posture, such as tremor, tics, or fidgeting. Any sterotypies ( organized, repetitive movements or speech or perseverative postures). Does the Pt exhibit any rituals such as a need to touch objects repetitively, as in obsessive–compulsive disorder, or any habits such as nail biting, thumb sucking, lip licking, yawning, or scratching. Tattoos, disfigurements, pins/studs and other body piercings.

The quality of the patient's eye contact is of great importance in gauging affective states. Negativistic patients, especially those with catatonia, may avert their gaze from the interviewer. Children with early infantile autism characteristically demonstrate eccentricities of eye contact, for example, staring "through" the interviewer or averting their gaze from him or her. A delirious patient whose sensorium is impaired may stare into space, as may a melancholic or schizophrenic patient whose thoughts are dominated by gloomy ruminations or delusional preoccupations. Intermittent staring is a feature of different forms of epilepsy. The interviewer notes whether the patient's attention can be captured, albeit briefly. If not, the interviewer should suspect an organic brain disorder.

Some patients stare at the interviewer intently. He or she should distinguish the wide eyes of awe or fear from the narrowed slits of hypervigilant suspiciousness. Other patients make hesitant eye contact, particularly when they are embarrassed about what they are saying. Not all patients with shifty gaze are liars, and some prevaricators have learned to deliver their lines without batting an eyelash.

The impact of the eyes on interpersonal relations cannot be overestimated. The configuration of supraorbital, circumorbital, and facial musculature; eyelids; palpebral fissure; gaze; depth of ocular focus; pupil size; and conjunctival moisture combine to produce a range of social signals of great significance for interpersonal dominance, competition, attraction, hostility or avoidance, the initiation and punctuation of conversation, and the feedback a person requires to know how the other person has responded to what one has said.

Eyes and face are combined with body posture and movement in a gestalt. The face provides the clues to remoteness, bewilderment, and perplexity, whereas the whole body is involved in tenseness (e.g., clenched fists, sweaty palms, stiff back, leaning forward), restlessness, preoccupation, boredom, and sadness.

Level of consciousness.

Speech: spontaneous, coherent, rate, fluency, and good volume OR aphasia (expressive/receptive), dysarthria.

The patient may be uncommunicative or, in the extreme, quite mute. In contrast, he or she may be friendly and communicative, even loquacious or garrulous. Patients convey antagonism by hectoring; by being uncooperative, impertinent, or condescending; or even by making direct threats, criticizing, or verbally abusing the interviewer. In contrast, by tone of conversation and demeanor, the patient can convey respect, deference, anxiety to please, or ingratiation. The interviewer notes and describes the following attitudes in the patient: shyness, fear, suspiciousness, cautiousness, assertiveness, indifference, passivity, clowning, interest in the interviewer, clinging, coyness, seductiveness, or invasiveness

Mood and Affect. Affect refers to a feeling or emotion, experienced typically in response to an external event or a thought. The patient's relationship to the interviewer is a particular manifestation of affect. Affects are usually associated with feelings about the self or about others who are of personal significance to the individual. Less often, an affect is experienced alone, as though adrift from its reference point. Affect is the conscious component of a monitoring system that signals whether the individual is on track toward a personal goal; whether he or she is obstructed, frustrated, or prevented from achieving the goal; or whether he or she has already attained it. Compare, for example, the anticipatory pleasure at preparing to meet someone beloved; the anxiety and fear at seeing the beloved with a serious rival; the rage and despair of loss; and the exaltation of reunion. Similar, though more complex, affects may attend mountain climbing, solving mathematical puzzles, or giving birth. Whatever the goal, its remoteness, proximity, loss, repudiation, attainment, or inaccessibility are all accompanied by self-monitoring affect.

In contrast to an affect, which may be momentary, mood refers to an inner state that persists for some time, with a disposition to exhibit a particular emotion or affect. For example, a mood of depression may not prevent an individual from deriving momentary diversion from a joke; however, the expression of gloom, sadness, or desolation returns and prevails. Affects and mood are inferred from the patient's demeanor and spontaneous conversation. A general query such as "How are you feeling, now?" or "How have your spirits been?" can be helpful. The interviewer should try to avoid leading questions such as "Do you feel depressed?"

Demeanor and affect usually coincide, but sometimes they do not. For example, a stiff smile can mask anxiety or depression. If the interviewer suspects this to be the case, he or she can offer an indicating or clarifying interpretation to help the patient recover suppressed emotion, such as "I notice that even though you speak of sad things, you are smiling" or "It's hard to smile when you feel bad inside."

The interviewer describes in the mental status report the general qualities of the patient's emotional expression. Particular morbid affects or moods are noted. For example, is the patient affectively flat, that is, emotionally dull, monotonous, and lacking in resonance? This presentation is characteristic of chronic schizophrenia and dementia. Is the patient emotionally constricted, with a narrow range of affect, as in obsessional or schizoid personality? Does the patient exhibit inappropriate or incongruous affect, in that it is not in keeping with the topic of conversation?

Does the patient show evidence of lability, suddenly changing from neutral to excited or from one emotional pole to the other? Lability is often associated with emotional intemperateness, an abrupt unreflective expression of heightened emotion (e.g., excited anticipation, affection, irritation).

The interviewer notes the presence of histrionic affect, the blatant but rather shallow expression of emotion often observed in those who exaggerate their feelings in order to avoid being ignored and who need to capture, or who fear to lose, the center of the interpersonal stage. Histrionic affect is often encountered in people with histrionic, narcissistic, or borderline personality disorder.

Morbid euphoria, a sense of well-being expressed in inexorable good spirits, is encountered in hypomania or mania and less commonly in schizophrenia and organic brain disorder. Frontal lobe dysfunction, characteristic of neurosyphilis, disseminated sclerosis and after traumatic brain injury, may be associated with fatuous joking and lack of foresight. Silliness is sometimes encountered in histrionic or immature people overwhelmed by the enormity of a difficult situation. Morbid silliness is also characteristic of some disorganized schizophrenic patients.

As it becomes exaggerated, euphoria merges into elation and excitement; although the manic patient commonly also exhibits irritation if obstructed or thwarted. An extreme and transcendent exaltation of mood may be observed in the ecstatic states rarely associated with acute schizophreniform or schizophrenic disorders and epilepsy.

Apathy, a pervasive lack of interest and drive (also known as anergia), may be observed in patients with preschizophrenic, schizophrenic, depressive, and organic brain disorders. The apathetic patient has little or no enthusiasm for work, social interaction, or recreation. Anergia is usually associated with a decrease in sexual activity. Anhedonia, a subjective sense that nothing is pleasurable, is commonly associated with anergia and is observed in preschizophrenic, schizophrenic, and melancholic patients. Excessive fatigue, which may be manifest as hypersomnia, is associated with many disorders such as organic brain disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and somatization disorder.

When applied to an affect or mood, depression refers to a pervasive sense of sadness. Depression is often related to a life event involving loss, rejection, defeat, or disappointment. It may be associated with tearfulness and anger about the event. In severe depression or melancholia, the patient feels emotionally deadened or empty, the world stale and unprofitable, and the future hopeless. The patient is preoccupied with dark forebodings and may be agitated by persistent self-recrimination about past misdeeds. Diminished concentration and a slowing of thinking and movement characteristically accompany depressed affect and gloomy ruminations. In some patients agitated depression is associated with psychomotor restlessness. Severe depression has important somatic features, including characteristic posture and facies, headache, irritability, precordial heaviness, gastrointestinal slowing, anorexia, weight loss, loss of sexual interest, and insomnia. Depression typically has a diurnal variation: Dysphoria, hopelessness, and agitation are worse in the morning, and the patient brightens up by evening.

The interviewer will readily recognize open anger and irritability. These feelings may be quite understandable in the context of the patient's circumstances. Morbid anger, however, is defined by its pervasiveness, frequency, disproportionate quality, impulsiveness, and uncontrollability. Morbid anger is associated with organic brain disorder, usually in the form of catastrophic reactions to frustration, especially when the patient can no longer complete a familiar or easy task. Abnormal anger is also associated with some forms of epilepsy; personality disorders of the aggressive, antisocial, borderline, or paranoid type; attention-deficit and disruptive behavior disorders of childhood; drunkenness; paranoid disorders; hypomania or mania; and intermittent or isolated explosive disorders.

Controlled hostility may be expressed as sullenness, uncooperativeness, superiority, or mockery. It can be helpful to invite the patient to express anger or resentment directly and to define its origin. This is particularly the case with adolescents. When working with adolescents, the interviewer might consider saying, "Whenever I ask you a question, you close up. Something about being here is making you pretty uptight. Can you tell me what it is?"

Anxiety and fear refer to the subjective apprehension of impending danger, together with widespread manifestations of autonomic discharge (e.g., dilated pupils; cold, sweaty palms; tachycardia; tachypnea; nausea; bowel hurry; urinary urgency). Fear has an object: the need to defend oneself against uncertain odds (e.g., a charging bull, a near accident in an automobile). Anxiety is associated with the threat to an essential value, for example, being attached to someone beloved, not being a coward, being successful, or being highly regarded. Direct action (i.e., fight or flight) can eliminate fear, whereas the adaptive solution to anxiety is likely to require planning and persistence. Anxiety and fear are biologically advantageous because they signal the need for constructive responses.

In morbid anxiety, affect is cast adrift from its moorings, either to float free or fasten on a substitute, phobic object or situation (e.g., heights, a particular animal, elevators, enclosed spaces, being fat). Morbid anxiety appears disproportionate or eccentric and is recognized as pathologic by the patient and others. Many of the disorders of thought content (described later in this chapter) can be regarded as unconsciously determined, pathologic mechanisms that detach anxiety from its object or block and divert it at its origin

TP. organized, sequential and goal-directed or cicumstantiality, tangentiality, derailment, flight of ideas, neologisms, confabulation, incoherence, clang associations, thought blocking, perserveration, echolalia.

TC: delusions, illusions, ideas of reference, obsessions, compulsions, phobias, hallucinations, depersonalization, suicidal, homicidal ideations/intents.

Higher cognitive function: Orientation/Registration/Attention/Calculation/Memory recall/Language/fund of knowledge/vocabulary/abstract or concrete reasoning/judgemen/insight. MiniCog/MMSE.

Multiaxial diagnosis:

Axis I: Clinical psychiatric syndromes (e.g. mood disorders, schizophrenia, general anxiety disorder, substance abuse disorders) and other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.

Axis II: Personality disorders, mental retardation, and general descriptions of the pt's long-standing coping strategies (defense mechansims) and interactive styles. Developmental d/o.

Axis III: Current medical problems, medical problems contributing to current condition

Axis IV: Psychosocial and environmental problems (e.g. divorce, injury, death of a loved one) and other stressors relevant to the illness (6 point scale)

Axis V: Global assessment of function (use published scale in DSM-IV). Exhibited by the pt during the interview (social, occupational, and psychological functioning) using a standardized, numeric scale with a continuum from 100 (superior functioning) to 1 (grossly impaired functioning) is used. (90 point scale)

GAF: 40-45 typically qualifies for inpatient psych.