Psychiatric Evaluations

A psychiatric evaluation is a process commonly carried out for clinical and therapeutic purposes in which information is gathered about a person.  It is used to establish a diagnosis and formulation of the patient’s problems and is usually the first stage of the treatment process.

The evaluation includes social and biographical information, direct observations, and data from specific psychological tests. It is typically conducted by a psychiatrist or a specialized nurse practitioner in a hospital, an out-patient setting, or as a home-based assessment.

An essential part of any psychiatric evaluation is the mental status examination (MSE).  Its purpose is to obtain a comprehensive cross-sectional description of the patient’s mental state by focusing on the patient’s appearance, attitude, behavior, speech, mood and affect, thought process, thought content, perception, cognition, insight, and judgment. Data is collected through a combination of direct and indirect means:

• . Unstructured observation while obtaining biographical and social information

• . Focused questions about current symptoms

• . Formalized psychological tests.