Mental State Examination (ABC STAMP LICKERS)
• A – Appearance
General look: apparent age, build, grooming/hygiene, dress, any scars/tattoos or unusual features.
• B – Behaviour
Psychomotor activity, eye contact, mannerisms/tics, agitation/retardation, gait.
• C – Cooperation (and Attitude)
Cooperative/guarded/hostile/suspicious/seductive; rapport and engagement.
STAMP
• S – Speech
Rate (slow/pressured), volume (soft/loud), quantity (poverty/verbose), fluency/articulation/prosody.
• T – Thought (form & content)
Form: goal-directed vs derailment/flight of ideas/loose associations/thought blocking.
Content: preoccupations, obsessions/compulsions, overvalued ideas, delusions, ideas of reference, suicidality/homicidality.
• A – Affect
Observed emotion: range (flat/blunted/restricted/labile), intensity, reactivity, congruence with stated mood.
• M – Mood
Patient’s own words (“How is your mood?”). Depressed/anxious/irritable/euphoric; duration and stability.
• P – Perceptions
Hallucinations (AH/VH/others), illusions, depersonalization/derealization; internal vs external origin and level of distress/control.
LICKERS
• L – Level of consciousness (and Orientation)
Alert/drowsy/stuporous; oriented to person/place/time/situation.
• I – Insight
Awareness of illness/need for treatment and attribution of symptoms.
• C – Cognition
Attention, concentration, memory (immediate/recent/remote), abstraction, language, calculation, praxis
• K – Knowledge (fund of knowledge)
General information appropriate to education/culture (e.g., current events).
• E – Endings
Risk: suicidal/homicidal ideation, intent, plan, means; also risky behaviors/neglect as relevant.
• R – Reliability
How trustworthy is the history? Consistency, collateral need.
• S – Social (or Safety) supports (often included implicitly)
Sometimes folded into risk/reliability or psychosocial context.