Mental Health Concerns in the Older Adult

Mini–mental state examination (MMSE) refers to a tool that helps to assess the mental status of a patient. It consists of eleven question is used to measure five key areas of the cognitive functions, including, attention and calculation, language, recall, registration, and orientation. A person can get 30 as the maximum score with a score of less than 23 indicating the existence of cognitive impairment (Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, 2012). An MMSE test was carried out on an older adult (76 years old) who is called Tom. The old man does not have a mental medical history. However, his family members claim that over the last years he has been relatively forgetful and has grown less social. Mr. Tom has leaves with her wife and one grandchild who is at the adolescent age. He is not involved in any physically demanding job, and he is not employed. When winding up, Mr.’ Tom tends to his small orchard together with his wife of 40 years and his is obese, smokes and has type 1 Diabetes. Mr. Tom has not been on any medication, and he has been leading a healthy life. The score of the patient for MMSE was as follows.

For the orientation area, he scored 10/10. In the registration area, the man scored 3/5. The recall area the man scored 1/3. In the language area he scored 2/9 and in the attention and calculation, he scored 2/5. The total score for the man were 20/30. The score of the man was below 23 which show that he has a cognitive impairment.  Usually in the MMSE test a score of 0-9 indicates that the person has severe cognitive impairment, 10-18 shows that he has a moderate impairment and between 19 and 23 indicates that a person has mild cognitive impairment (Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, 2012). In this case, Mr. Tom has mild impairment. However, he has severe impairment in language, recalling and registration and attention and calculation, mild impairment in language and has signs of impairment in orientation area.

The results indicate that Mr………