PsychEd Shorts 4: Mental Status Exam

Welcome to PsychEd, the psychiatry podcast for medical learners, by medical learners. This short episode covers the mental status exam.

Hosts: Dr. Matthew Cho (PGY1) and Dr. Angad Singh (PGY2)

Audio editing: Dr. Angad Singh (PGY2)

Episode Evaluation: Shelly Palchik (MS4)

Timestamps:

(0:20) Basics of the mental status exam

(2:05) Appearance

(4:00) Behaviour

(5:00) Cooperation

(6:20) Speech

(7:18) Emotions - Mood and Affect

(9:12) Perception

(10:15) Thought process

(12:35) Thought content

(13:28) Insight

(14:10) Judgement

(14:46) Cognition

References: 

Donnelly, J., Rosenberg, M., & Fleeson, W. P. (1970). The evolution of the mental status—past and future. American Journal of Psychiatry, 126(7), 997-1002.

Folstein, M. F., Folstein, S. E., & McHugh, P. R. (1975). “Mini-mental state”: a practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of psychiatric research, 12(3), 189-198.

Norris, D. R., Clark, M. S., & Shipley, S. (2016). The mental status examination. American family physician, 94(8), 635-641.

PsychDB. (2024, Jan 18). Mental Status Exam. https://www.psychdb.com/teaching/mental-status-exam-mse

Voss, R., & Das, J. (2024). Mental status examination. StatPearls.

If you want to learn more about the mental status exam, check out our longer episode about this topic: https://www.psychedpodcast.org/blog/mse

For more PsychEd, follow us on Instagram (@psyched.podcast),  Facebook (PsychEd Podcast), X (@psychedpodcast), and Bluesky (@psychedpodcast.bsky.social‬). You can email us at psychedpodcast@gmail.com and visit our website at psychedpodcast.org.