Psychiatric History and Examination
Psychiatric History and Examination
Psychiatric History and Examination
Psychiatric History
Outline of PSYCHIATRIC History Outline of PERSONAL History (ANAMNESIS)
1. Identifying data A. Prenatal and perinatal
2. Chief Complaint B. Early childhood (through age 3)
3. History of present illness C. Middle childhood (ages 3-11)
a) Onset D. Late childhood (puberty through adolescence)
b) Precipitating factors E. Adulthood
4. Past illnesses a. Occupational history
5. Psychiatric b. Marital and relationship history
6. Medical c. Military history
7. Alcohol and other substance history d. Educational
8. Family history e. Religion
f. Social activity
g. Current living situation
h. Legal history
F. Sexual history
G. Fantasies and dreams
H. Values
1. IDENTIFYING DATA
Demographic summary of pt by name, age, sex, marital status, occupation, language ( if other than English), ethnic
background, and religion, insofar as they are pertinent, and current circumstances of the living.
Thumbnail sketch of potentially important pt characteristics that may affect diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and compliance.
2. CHIEF COMPLAINT
In the patient’s own words, states why he or she has come or been brought in for help.
3. HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Comprehensive and chronologic picture of the events leading up to the current moment in the patient’s life.
Record in patient’s own words as much as possible
Determine: Questions to ask:
Devt of sx from time of onset to present When did you first notice something happening to you?
Relation of life events, conflicts, stressors. Were you upset about anything when the sx began?
Drugs Did they begin suddenly or gradually?
Change from levels of functioning
4, 5. PAST MEDICAL HISTORY
Includes: Importance:
Previous psychiatric & medical illness Many medical condns &their tx cause psychiatric sx and may be
Psychiatric disorders mistaken for a 1psychiatric disorder.
Major medical or surgical illnesses &major Medical status will also guide psychiatric tz decisions.
traumas Names and dosing schedules for all currently prescribed
Psychosomatic illnesses nonpsychiatric drugs should be obtained to avoid adverse
Neurological illnesses (craniocerebral trauma, interactions with prescribed psychiatric medication.
convulsions, tumors)
7. FAMILY HISTORY
Includes:
Any psychiatric illness, hospitalization, and treatment of the patient’s immediate family members
Medical and genetic illnesses in the family
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
A. APPEARANCE D. AFFECT
Patient's appearance and overall physical impression as Pt’s present emotional responsiveness, inferred from
reflected by the patient's facial expression, inclamount and range
o Poise of expressive behavior.
o Posture In the following terms
o Clothing o constricted (limited variation)
o Grooming. o blunted (minimal variation)
o flat (no variation)
B. ATTITUDE TOWARD THE EXAMINER E. SPEECH
Patient's facial expressions and attitude toward the Infoon all aspects of the pt’s speech, incl
examiner. o Quality
Can be described as cooperative, friendly, attentive, o Quantity
interested, frank, seductive, defensive, contemptuous, o rate of production
perplexed, apathetic hostile, playful, ingratiating, evasive or o volume
guarded. of speech during the interview.
C. MOOD F. PERCEPTION
"Pervasive and sustained emotion that colors the person's Perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations and
perception of the world. illusions, ~experienced in reference to self or to
" Ask questions such as "How do you feel most days?" in environment.
order to trigger a response. The sensory system involved (auditory, visual, taste,
Description should include the olfactory, or tactile), and the content of the illusion or
o Depth the hallucinatory experience should be described
o Intensity Depersonalization extreme feelings of detachment
o Duration and Derealization from self or environment
o Fluctuations Formication feeling of bugs crawling under the
Common adjectives to describe mood include depressed, skin ( seen in cocainism)
despairing, irritable, anxious, angry, expansive, euphoric,
empty, guilty, hopeless, futile, self-contemptuous, frightened
and perplexed.
G. THOUGHT PROCESS (Form of thinking)
Refers to the way in which the person puts together ideas and associations, the form in which the person thinks. (logical
and coherent; completely illogical or incomprehensible.
Looseness of association irrelevance, do the ideas expressed seem unrelated and idiosyncratic
Flight of ideas change topics, rapid thinking
Tangential departure from topic with no return
Circumstantial being vague, i.e., “beating around the bush”, loss of capacity for goal-oriented thinking
Clanging rhyming words
Punning talking in riddles
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Thought blocking speech is halted, interruption of the train of thought before an idea has been completed
Poverty limited content
Neologism creating new words
Word salad nonsensical responses, i.e., jabberwocky), derailment (extreme irrelevance
H. THOUGHT CONTENT AND MENTAL TRENDS
Refers to what a person is actually thinking: ideas, beliefs, preoccupations, obsessions
Aspects of thought content are as follows:
Obsession and compulsions Phobias Suicidal ideation or intent Homicidal ideation or intent
JUDGEMENT Estimate the patient's judgment based on the history or on an imaginary scenario.
IMPULSIVITY Estimate the degree of the patient's impulse control. Ask the patient about doing things without thinking or planning.
RELIABILITY The mental status part concludes with the psychiatrists impressions of the patient's reliability and capacity to report
his or her situation accurately.
INSIGHT
6 levels of insight
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
2. Slight awareness of being sick and needing help but denying it at the same time
3. Awareness of being sick but blaming it on others, on external factors or on organic factors
5. Intellectual insight: admission that the patient is ill and that symptoms or failures in social adjustment are due to the patient's
own particular irrational feelings or disturbances without applying this knowledge to future experiences
Lecture 5 mra
Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
unacceptable and alien; reality testing is intact about external reality, even in face of contrary
…disturbance is relatively enduring and not limited to evidence
transitory reaction to stressors.
Note that most psychiatric signs and symptoms are rooted in normal behavior and can be understood as various points on
a spectrum of behaviors ranging from normal to pathological.
Consciousness
Consciousness Attention
• State of awareness • Amount of effort exerted in focusing on certain portions
• Apperception: perception modified by person’s own of an experience;
emotions and thoughts • Ability to concentrate
• Sensorium: state of cognitive functioning of special
senses
• Note that disturbances in consciousness are most often
associated with brain pathology
Disturbances of Consciousness Disturbances of Attention
• Disorientation
• Clouding of consciousness 1. Distractibility Inability to concentrate
• Stupor 2. Selective State in which attention is drawn to
• Delirium inattention irrelevant or unimportant external
• Coma stimuli
• Coma vigil: cannot be aroused but with eyes open 3. Hypervigilance Excessive focus and attention on all
• Twilight state: disturbed consciousness with hallucination external and internal stimuli; usually
• Dreamlike state: complex partial seizure or psychomotor secondary to delusional or paranoid
epilepsy states
• Somnolence: state of near-sleep; strong desire for sleep; 4. Trance Focused attention and altered
long sleep consciousness (hypnosis)
• Confusion 5. Disinhibition Removal of an inhibitory effect that
• Drowsiness permits persons to lose control of
• Sundowning/Sundowner’s syndrome: drowsiness, impulses (alcohol intoxication)
confusion, ataxia and falling as result of excessive
medication; usually in older persons; happen at night
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Disturbances in Suggestibility
• Compliance to an idea or influence
• Folie a deux (folie a trois): communicated emotional illness between two to three people
• Hypnosis: heightened suggestibility
Emotion
Complex feeling state with psychic, somatic and behavioral components related to affect and mood
Affect
Observed expression of emotion, probably inconsistent with patient’s description of emotion
• Appropriate affect • Restricted or constricted affect
• Inappropriate affect • Flat affect: monotonous voice and immobile face
• Blunted affect: severe reduction in emotional intensity • Labile affect: rapid and abrupt change in emotional state,
unrelated to external stimulus
Other Emotions
• Anxiety • Tension
• Free-floating anxiety • Panic
• Fear • Apathy
• Agitation: motor restlessness • Ambivalence: two opposing impulses toward same thing
in the same person at the same time
Mood
Pervasive and sustained emotion subjectively experienced and reported by a patient and observed by
others
• Dysphoric: unpleasant mood
• Euthymic: normal range of mood; implies absence of depressed or evelated mood
• Expansive mood: expression without restraint, due to overestimation of significance
• Irritable mood
• Mood swings (labile mood): oscillations between euphoria and depression or anxiety
• Elevated mood
• Euphoria
• Ecstasy: feeling of intense rapture
• Depression: feelings of sadness, loneliness, despair, low self-esteem, and self-reproach. Signs include psychomotor
retardation and at times, agitation, withdrawal from personal contact, and vegetative symptoms such as anorexia and
insomnia. Refers to a mood or a disorder.
• Anhedonia: loss of interest in, or withdrawal from all pleasurable activities
• Grief or mourning: bereavement
• Alexithymia: inability to describe/lack of awareness of own emotions or moods
• Suicidal ideation: thought or act of taking one’s own life
• Emotion
• Mood
• Elation: feeling of joy, euphoria, triumph, and intense self-satisfaction or optimism
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Motor activity
• Echopraxia: pathologic copying of • Catatonia and postural abnormalities
movement o Catalespy: constantly maintained immobile position
• Negativism: motiveless resistance to all o Catatonic excitement
instructions o Catatonic stupor
• Cataplexy: temporary loss of muscle tone o Catatonic rigidity: rigid posture; unmoving
due to variety of emotional states o Catatonic posturing: bizarre or inappropriate posture;
• Stereotypy: repetitive fixed pattern of action maintained for long peds.
and speech o Cerea flexibilitas (waxy flexibility): can be molded to a
• Mannerism subsequently maintained position
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Motor behavior
• Command automism: automatic obedience
• Mutism: voicelessness in absence of structural damage
• Automism: represent unconscious symbolic activity
Overactivity: Psychomotor agitation Hypoactivity (hypokinesis)
• Hyperactivity (hyperkinesis) • Mimicry
• Tic: involuntary, spasmodic motor • Aggression
movement • Actingout
• Sleepwalking (somnambulism) • Abulia: reduced impulse to think and act; indifference about
• Akathisia: subjective feeling of muscle consequences of action as result of neurological deficit
tension secondary to antipsychotic or • Anergia: lack of energy
other medication; can be mistaken for • Astastia abasia: inability to stand or walk in normal manner as in
psychotic agitation conversion disorders
• Polyphagia: pathological overeating • Coprophagia: eating of filth
• Tremor: rhythmical alteration in • Dyskinesia: difficultly in performing movements; extrapyramidal
movement; usually more pronounced disorder
during periods of anger and tension, and • Muscle rigidity: muscles remain immovable. Schizophrenia.
less so in relaxed state or during sleep • Twirling: sign in autistic children who continuously rotate in the direction
• Ataxia: Lack of coordination, either in which their head is turned
physical or mental • Bradykinesia: slowness of motor activity; decrease in normal
• Floccillation: aimless picking usually at spontaneous movement
bedding or clothing as in delirium • Chorea: random, involuntary, quick, jerky, and purposeless movements.
• Compulsion Huntington’s diease.
o Dipsomania: alcohol intake • Dystonia: slow, sustained contractions of axial and appendicular
o Kleptomania: stealing muscles; one gesture usually predominates, leading to postural
o Satyriasis (nymphomania in deviations. Extrapyramidal motor disturbance.
women): coitus • Amimia: inability to make gestures or to understand those of others
o Trichitollomania: pulling out of • Seizure
hair o Generalized tonic-clonic seizure; grand mal seizure or
o Ritual: anxiety reducing psychomotor seizure
o Simple partial seizure; without altered consciousness
o Complex partial seizure: with altered consciousness
• Convulsion
o Clonic convulsion
o Alternate contraction and relaxation of muscles
o Tonic convulsion: muscle contraction is sustained
Thinking
Lecture 9 mra
Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Goal-directed flow of ideas, symbols and associations initiated by a problem or task and leading toward a reality-oriented
conclusion
Parapraxis/Freudian slip: considered part of normal thinking
Abstract thinking: ability to grasp essentials of a whole & break a whole into parts and to discern common properties
Delusion Phobia
Bizarre delusion Delusion of infidelity (delusional jealousy) • Specific phobia
Systematized delusion Erotomania/ Clerambault-Kandinsky • Social phobia
Mood-congruent delusion complex: delusional belief, more common • Acrophobia
Mood-incongruent delusion in women, that someone is deeply in love • Agoraphobia
Nihilistic delusion: false feeling that self, with them • Algophobia:pain
others, or the world is nonexistent or Pseudologia phantastica: a type of lying in • Ailurophobia:cats
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
coming to an end which a person appears to believe in the • Erythrophobis: color red or
Delusion of poverty reality of his fantasies; associated with blushing
Somatic delusion Munchausen syndrome, repeated feigning • Panphobia
Delusion of self accusation of illness • Claustrophobia
Paranoid delusions Delusion of control • Xenophobia: strangers
• Delusion of persecution • Thought withdrawal • Zoophobia: animals
• Delusions of grandeur • Thought insertion • Needle phobia/blood injection
• Delusion of reference • Thought broadcasting phobia
• Thought control
Speech
Disturbances in speech
Pressure of speech Dysprosody loss of normal speech melody
Volubility (logorrhea) Dysarthria difficulty in articulation, not in word finding
Poverty of speech Stuttering repetition or prolongation of a syllable; impaired fluency
Nonspontaneous speech Cluttering rapid and jerky spurts, erratic and dysrythmic speech
Poverty of content of speech Aculalia nonsense speech associated with markedly impaired comprehension
Excessively soft or loud speech Bradylalia Abnormally slow speech
Dysphonia Difficulty of pain with speaking
Perception
Process of transferring physical stimulation into psychological information. Mental process by which sensory stimuli are
brought to awareness.
Disturbances of perception
• Illusion: Misinterpretation or misinterpretation of real or external sensory stimuli
• Hallucination: False sensory perception not associated with real stimuli
Types of Hallucinations:
• Hypnagogic hallucination: while • Gustatory hallucination • Mood-incongruent hallucination
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Memory
Function by which information stored in the brain is later recalled to consciousness
Orientation: normal state of oneself and one’s surroundings in terms of time, place and person.
Disturbances of memory
• Amnesia: partial or total inability to recall past experiences
o Anterograde: Loss of memory for events that happen after, subsequent, to onset of amnesia; common after trauma
o Retrograde: Loss of memory for events that happened before onset of amnesia
• Hypermnesia: excessive retention or recall
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
Levels of Memory
1. Immediate Recall of perceived material within seconds to minutes
2. Recent Recall of events over the past few days
3. Recent past Recall of events over the past few moths
4. Remote Recall of events in the distant past
Intelligence
Ability to understand, recall, mobilize and constructively integrate previous learning in meeting new situations
Mental retardation: lack of intelligence to interfere with social and vocational performance
Mild: IQ of 50 or 55 to approximately 70 Idiot: mental age les than 3 years
Moderate: IQ of 35 or 40 to 50 or 55 Imbecile: mental age of 3 to 7 years
Severe: IQ of 20 or 25 to 35 or 40 Moron: mental age of about 8 years
Profound: IQ below 20 or 25
Dementia
Organic and global deterioration of intellectual functioning without clouding of consciousness
1. Dyscalculia loss of ability to do calculations
2. Dysgraphia loss of ability to write in cursive style
3. Alexia loss of a previously possessed reading facility: not explained by defective visual acuity
• Pseudodementia: clinical features resembling dementia NOT caused by an organic condition; dementia syndrome of
depression
• Concrete thinking: literal thinking; one dimensional thought
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Med2B De Castro – Prelim Topics Psychopath
• Abstract thinking: ability to appreciate nuances of meaning: multidimensional thinking with ability to use metaphors and
hypotheses appropriately
Insight
Ability to understand the true cause and meaning of a situation
1. Intellectual insight Understanding of the objective reality of a set of circumstances without the ability to apply the
understanding in any useful way to master the situation
2. True insight Understanding of the objective reality of a situation, coupled with the motivation and the emotional
impetus to master the situation
3. Impaired insight Diminished ability to understand the objective reality of a situation
Judgment
Ability to assess a situation correctly and to act appropriately in the situation
Critical judgment ability to assess, discern and choose among various options in a situation
Automatic judgment reflex performance of an action
Impaired judgment diminished ability to understand a situation correctly and to act appropriately
Lecture 14 mra