Questions Asked in Interviews in Regard to Mental Health

The mini-mental status exam is used to evaluate attention, orientation, short-term memory in both retention and recall, and common phrases in language.

Attention

• To test attention, a clinician may ask the client or patient to spell the word "world" backward or to count backward from 100 in increments of seven. Both of these tasks require some concentration.

Orientation

• Here the clinician will ask question to see if the person is oriented to time and place, and may include asking about the date, the location and who is the current president.

Retention

• The clinician will name unrelated objects (such as a hat, an orange and a typewriter) or a series of numbers to be remembered later.

Recall

• Usually after a few minutes have passed since naming the objects or numbers, the clinician will ask that they be repeated back.

Phrases

• The clinician asks for the meaning of a commonly known proverb, such as "When the cat's away the mice will play." This tests the person's ability to think in abstract versus concrete terms.