The Psychiatric Mental Status Examination / Edition 1

by Paula T. Trzepacz, Robert W. Baker

Overview

Developed from years of teaching psychiatry to medical students and residents, this comprehensive text devoted solely to describing the mental status examination (MSE) fills a void in the teaching literature and will be valuable to both students first learning about the MSE and seasoned clinicians seeking an informative reference. The introductory chapter offers basic advice on interviewing patients and eliciting information. Six major sections of the MSE follow and are thoroughly described with a chapter devoted to each: Appearance, Attitude, Activity; Mood and Affect; Speech and Language; Thought Content, Thought Process, and Perception; Cognition; and Insight and Judgment. Each chapter lists a detailed definition of reference for students describing their findings, and are an insightful review even for experienced practitioners. The clinical relevance of mental status abnormalities is illustrated through frequent examples of disorders that can cause the particular signs and symptoms defined in each chapter. A final chapter describing fictional case histories with hypothetical examples of written mental status reports will be particularly useful for those learning to write such reports. This text is an important addition to the libraries of students and practitioners who work with psychiatric patients and should help to simplify and organize a challenging task.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195062519
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	01/28/1993
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	286,368
Product dimensions:	9.56(w) x 6.50(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

1. What is a Mental Status Examination
2. Appearance, Attitude, and Activity
3. Mood and Affect
4. Speech and Language
5. Thought Content, Thought Processes, and Perception
6. Cognition
menu Insight and Judgement
8. Case Examples

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Michael Joel Schrift, DO, MA (Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine)
Description: This book intends to describe the basic principles and techniques of the psychiatric mental status examination.
Purpose: The purpose is to provide medical students, residents, practicing physicians, psychologists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses with a practical and user-friendly approach to the assessment of patients with psychiatric disorders. The authors state that previously published mental status exam texts have either a psychoanalytic approach, a programmed text with a nontraditional format, or a text that integrates mental status information with interviewing techniques and differential diagnosis. The authors believe that this book fills a void in teaching students and seasoned clinicians the mental status examination.
Audience: The stated target audience is, as mentioned above, medical students, residents, practicing physicians (in the fields of psychiatry, neurology, internal medicine, and family practice), psychologists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses. I would tend to doubt that practitioners outside psychiatry would purchase this book.
Features: This book contains no color, but the black-and-white illustrations and tables are of good quality and sufficient quantity and are adequately described. Photos depicting abnormalities in patients' appearance and activity would have been helpful. Definitions of terms listed at the end of each chapter were quite useful. A major problem was the "pseudo-referencing." Although there was a reference section at the end of each chapter the opinions and information displayed as facts were not specifically cited in the references; they should have called the reference section a "further reading" section. Also, the references tended not to cite original research but rather review articles and book chapters.
Assessment: This book, which is organized by the traditional areas of the mental status exam, could be a useful introduction for students and residents if it were not for the major problem with the references.

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