Mental Status Exam

Attending to internal stimuli: behavior indicating a person is paying attention to hallucinations -- can manifest by inappropriate emotional responses or looking around the room

Circumstantial: gives excessive detail in answers to questions; takes a while to get to the point

Delusion: fixed, false belief based on incorrect references about reality that is held in spite of evidence to the contrary

Delusions of reference: the feeling that events, objects, or other persons have a particular and unusual significance

Depersonalization: change in perception of the self; feeling unreal or detached from the body; temporary loss of one's own reality

Derealization: change in awareness of the external world; things do not look or feel normal

Flat affect: no or little facial expression and vocal inflection

Flight of ideas: thought disorder marked by accelerated speech with abrupt changes in the topic; rapid & frequent shifts in the topic based on understandable associations

Grandiose delusions: fixed false beliefs of an expansive or exaggerated sense of self

Labile affect: rapidly changing affect

Loosening of associations: lack of obvious connections between thoughts or answers to questions but the patient is unaware 

Obsessions: unwanted, intrusive ideas, images, or impulses that cause marked anxiety or distress; experienced as a product of a person's own mind

Paranoia: suspiciousness and general mistrust of others; may be hostile, defensive, or irritable

Perseveration: inappropriate repetition of an act or thought after its proper context has passed

Tangential: goes off on a related topic & never returns to the point

Thought blocking: speech and train of thought are interrupted and picked again a few moments later

Thought broadcasting: belief that others can hear one's inner thoughts

Thought insertion: thoughts are being put into someone's mind from an outside source

Word salad: random words strung together with no syntax or grammar persevered