Nursing diagnostic question to analyze the affective domain.?

Question

Need suggestions for questions to analyze the affective domain of patients during initial interview. Specifically, for a from we use in the ER called the "Psychiatric Assessment Tool". It lists "Affect" but does not detail assessment. JUst throwing this out while I research. Thanks everyone.

Answer 1

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but in my experience, affect has always been the "actual expression of an emotional state" if you will.

Example: Mood is depressed. Affect may be --> tearful, flat (mean none), blunted (meaning the face is barely expressing any emotion, the body language is minimally expressive), restricted (generally full range of facial and body expressiveness, but there's some limitation to just how much), and "depressed".

Another example: Mood is anxious. Affect may be any of previous stated. It can also be anxious. Affect can simply be listed as "congruent" to mood, as well.

A couple of other terms frequently seen are: labile (expression is up, down, and all around...one minute you may see laughter or smiles, and the next they can be in tears....as with folks with Bipolar d/o); and euthymic (which is the statistical "normal range" answer.....meaning it matches a "fair" or "normal" mood state, and is congruent).

Your best bet is a checklist to identify psychomotor agitation or retardation, eye contact, voluntary/purposeful movement (vs. involuntary movement such as foot tapping or leg bouncing), and similar descriptors that provide and indication of the observable affect.

Interpretations of the person's inner feelings (to my understanding) fall under the mood category.