Mental Status Exam

Describe the elements of and demonstrate the Mini-Mental Status Examination.
This exam is copyrighted, (interesting legal story) but is widely reproduced and is available here. An alternative to MMSE is the St. Louis Mental Status Exam, which isn't copyrighted and is discussed in the American Journal of Psychiatry here.

Describe additional elements of the Mental Status Examination that are not included in the MMSE, including emotions, speech and language skills, appearance, judgment, abstract reasoning, thought process and content.

Define dementia, delirium, coma, stupor, lethargy.
These words may be useful for multiple choice testing, but many neurologists ask that you simply describe what you observe in detail rather than misuse this precise vocabulary.

Dementia
Chronic deficits beyond normal aging. Indicative of a structural problem in the brain. Difficult to distinguish in a single sitting, as it's a degenerative 'process'.

Delirium
Acute deficits, waxing and waning alterations in consciousness and awareness

coma
unresponsive to speech, pain

stupor
unresponsive to speech, but responsive to pain

lethargy
huge range, abnormal drowsiness

Contrast the findings of dementia and delirium on mental status testing.
Identifying mild cognitive changes at an earlier point in the progression of a patient's cognitive decline could allow clinicians to initiate effective treatments earlier, potentially altering the progression of the disease. The MMSE test includes simple questions and problems in a number of areas: the time and place of the test, repeating lists of words, arithmetic, language use and comprehension, and basic motor skills. It is commonly used in medicine to screen for dementia. It is also used to estimate the severity of cognitive impairment at a given point in time and to follow the course of cognitive changes in an individual over time, thus making it an effective way to document an individual's response to treatment.

In the time span of about 5-8 minutes a clinician can test memory and orientation. Some clinicians add a question to the MMSE to test executive function (i.e.: ask patient to draw a clock face).