Mental Health Assessment - Clinical Reflection

UNIT:
NAME:
DATE:

Mental Health Assessment
Clinical Reflection – Alison Video
Case Scenario
Nursing assessment is an important aspect to provision of appropriate mental nursing
care. Assessment is the first step of treatment process and involves gathering information about a
client for the purpose of making a diagnosis (Hunter, & Arthur, 2016). Nurses use mental status
examination (MSE) assessment as a tool to understand how a mental patient think, reason, feel
and remember (Johnsen, Slettebø, & Fossum, 2016). Nurses also require clinical reasoning skills
to detect impending client deterioration and make a decision that positively impact patient’s
outcomes (Petersen, 2016). Mental health nurses need to undertake MSE assessment and adapt
clinical reasoning cycle to appropriately identify patients’ issues and prioritize them to improve
their situation. The following reflection essay discusses the scope, nature, and rationale for
assessment of Alison video case study with particular reference to components of MSE.
The video case scenario is about a patient by the name Alison Wells who is a 38 year old
woman who is seeing her GP Dr. Taylor because of low mood. Alison is divorced and has two
children one 11 years while the other one 9 years. She works in the local supermarket and her
sister had noticed she seemed fed up for a couple of months. Alison feel that things have been
piling up and it seems she has not been able to cope with them.
Immediately after a brief introduction the GP started to gather information about Alison
condition. The GP starts by taking the patient history that involves the patient describing facts
about her condition. The GP requires Alison to explain what has been going on that allows the
patient to describe her condition. This initial stage helps the GP to put things into context by
either describing or listing facts about their condition. The GP asks the patient about her mood.
The patient mood is prolonged disposition or state of emotions based on mental condition
(Knorr, Tull, Anestis, Dixon-Gordon, Bennett, & Gratz, 2016). The patient states that most of the
time she is fed up and in the morning she sees things being black. The GP aims to collect cues or
information about the mood status of the patient to use it for diagnosis (Dalton, Gee, & Levett-
Jones, 2015). The GP asks the patient if she feels tearful and miserable to try and relate to the