Mental Status
• Mental status is a person’s emotional and cognitive functioning
o Optimal functioning aims toward simultaneous life satisfaction in
... [Show More] work, caring relationships, and within the self
o Usually, mental status strikes a balance between good and bad days, allowing person to function socially and occupationally
Question
The nurse understands that all of the following are components of the mental status assessment except?
1. Known illness or health problem
2. Current medications known to affect mood or cognition
3. Cultural background
4. Personal history; current stress, social habits, sleep habits, and drug and alcohol use
Mental Status Structure and Function
• Mental disorder
o Significant behavioral or psychological pattern associated with the following:
▪ Distress, a painful symptom
▪ Disability, impaired functioning
▪ Significant risk of pain, disability, or death, or a loss of freedom
Mental Status Structure and Function (Cont.)
• Organic disorders
o Due to brain disease of known specific organic cause (e.g., delirium, dementia, alcohol and drug intoxication and withdrawal)
• Psychiatric mental illnesses
o Organic etiology has not yet been established (e.g., anxiety disorder or schizophrenia)
o Mental status assessment documents a dysfunction and determines how that dysfunction affects self-care in everyday life
Defining Mental Status
• Mental status cannot be scrutinized directly like the characteristics of skin or heart sounds
• Its functioning is inferred through assessment of an individual’s behaviors:
o Consciousness
▪ Being aware of one's own existence, feelings, and thoughts and of the environment. This is the most elementary of mental status functions.
o Language
▪ Using the voice to communicate one's thoughts and feelings. This is a basic tool of humans, and its loss has a heavy social impact on the individual.
o Mood and affect
▪ Both of these elements deal with the prevailing feelings. Affect is a temporary expression of feelings or state of mind, and mood is more durable, a prolonged display of feelings that color the whole emotional life.
Question
o Orientation
▪ The awareness of the objective world in relation to the self. Able to name own person, place, and time.
o Attention
▪ The power of concentration, the ability to focus on one specific thing without being distracted by many environmental stimuli.
o Memory
▪ The ability to lay down and store experiences and perceptions for later recall. Recent memory evokes day-to-day events; remote memory brings up years' worth of experiences.
o Abstract reasoning
▪ Pondering a deeper meaning beyond the concrete and literal.
o Thought process
▪ The way a person thinks; the logical train of thought.
o Thought content
▪ What the person thinks—specific ideas, beliefs, the use of words.
o Perceptions
▪ An awareness of objects through the five senses.
Which of the following basic functions should the nurse test first in an assessment of mental status?
1. Behavior
2. Consciousness (is the patient breathing? ABCs)
3. Judgment
4. Language
.........................................................................................................................................................................................CONTINUED [Show Less]