Test Your Mental Status

Seek Psychologist's advice if you discover the following symptoms:

Major Depressive Disorder

• Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report or observation made by others
• Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day
• Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain
• Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation
• Fatigue or loss energy nearly every day
• Feeling of worthlessness excessive or inappropriate guilt
• Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness
• Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide

Dysthymic Disorder

• Depressed mood
• Insomnia or hypersomnia
• Poor appetite or overeating
• Low energy or fatigue
• Low self-esteem
• Poor concentration or difficulty making decisions
• Feelings of hopelessness

Manic Episode

• Persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood
• Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• Decreased need for sleep
• More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
• Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
• Increase in goal-directed activity or psychomotor agitation
• Distractibility
• Excessive involvement in pleasurably activities that have a high potential for painful consequences

Panic Disorder

• Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate
• Sweating
• Trembling or shaking
• Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
• Feeling of choking
• Fear of losing control or going crazy
• Fear of dying
• Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensations)
• Chills or hot flushes
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint
• Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)
• Nausea or abdominal distress

Obsessive - Compulsive Disorder

• Repetitive behaviors (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e.g., praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied rigidly
• Time consuming
• Recognized that the obsessions or compulsions are excessive or unreasonable

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

• The person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others.
• The person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror
• Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
• Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
• Hyper vigilance

Schizophrenia

• Delusion
• Hallucinations
• Disorganized Speech
• Grossly Disorganized or catatonic behavior

Anorexia Nervosa

• Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height
• Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though under-weight
• Disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight
• In postmenarcheal females, amenorrhea, i.e., the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles.

Bulimia Nervosa

• Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat during a similar period of time and under similar circumstances
• A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating
• Recurrent inappropriate compensatory behavior in order to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting; misuse of laxatives, diuretics, enemas, or other medications; fasting; or excessive exercise

Intermittent Explosive Disorder

• Several discrete episodes of failure to resist aggressive impulsive that result in serious assaultive acts or destruction of property
• The degree of aggressiveness expressed during the episodes is grossly out of proportion to any precipitating psychosocial stressors

Kleptomania

• Recurrent failure to resist impulses to steal objects that are not needed for personal use or for their monetary value
• Increasing sense of tension immediately before committing the theft
• Pleasure, gratification, or relief at the time of committing the theft

Pathological Gambling

• Is preoccupied with gambling (e.g., preoccupied with reliving past gambling experiences, handicapping or planning the next venture, or thinking of ways to get money with which to gamble)
• Needs to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement
• Has repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop gambling
• Is restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop gambling
• Gambles as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a dysphoric mood
• After losing money gambling, often returns another day to get even (“chasing” one’s losses)
• Lies to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with gambling
• Has committed illegal acts such as forgery, fraud, theft, or embezzlement to finance gambling