Assessment and Care Management for Dementia Patients - Essay Example

A mental status examination refers to an evaluation of a patient’s reasoning capability level, expressive mood, appearance and speech. Normally, a nurse evaluates the patient’s attitude and willingness to cooperate in answering certain questions. A mental status examination seeks to evaluate the degree and presence of an individual’s mental damage. The reasoning abilities examined engross an individual’s sense of place, time and personality identity, speech, judgement and problem solving.

Mental status examination is mostly used on patients suffering from dementia (Fatemi et al., 2008). Tardive Dyskinesia disorder is an illness where an individual experiences involuntary movements particularly in the lower face. Tardive dyskinesia occurs as a severe side effect of taking neuropletics drugs. It occurs when an individual takes these drugs for a long period. The symptoms of this illness include finger movement, jaw singing and tongue thrusting (Australian Government Department of Health, 2015).

Pica is an eating condition where an individual persistently eats substances with no nutritional value such as paper at an age that is developmentally unsuitable. It may be mild or may be life threatening (Sane Australia, 2014). This is an illness where individuals recurrently and involuntarily bring up undigested food from the stomach, re-chew it, and either spit it or swallow it back. This is caused by unintentional contraction of abdominal muscles (Sane, 2014). Catatonic disorder is an illness typified by instabilities in motor behaviour that may have either physiological or psychological basis.

The most common symptom of this illness is immobility where an individual may have a rigid body position for hours (Reach out, 2014). Amnestic disorder is a psychological illness that engrosses disruption of the memory. This