PMHNP Certification Q & A

Jennifer is a 27-year-old female who has been in psychiatric care for several months for a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. She has not responded to three different pharmacotherapeutic approaches and as a result she is now being evaluated by a new PMHNP provider. She maintains that she has always taken all medications as prescribed but all they do is make her tired. Further she is emphatic that the last provider “did not know what he was doing” but she has heard that the new NP is “really...

A 39-year-old male patient presents asking for pharmacotherapy to help with difficulty falling asleep. He denies any psychiatric history and is in good health. He is currently struggling with sleep because he is going through a difficult divorce and while he acknowledges that he has to work through it, the difficulty sleeping is so profound right now that it is making it difficult for him to be effective at work. The patient agrees to have an evaluation with a therapist, and the PMHNP agrees ...

A 27-year-old female patient presents for a follow-up appointment for generalized anxiety disorder. She has a complex history including polysubstance use disorder and borderline personality disorder, but she had been doing well. She achieved remission of her symptoms over one year ago and has been well managed on escitalopram 10 mg daily. She has been substance free for over one year, and is in therapy for her personality disorder. Today she is not feeling well. She reports some major psychos...

The PMHNP is called to the emergency department to evaluate a patient with an acute onset mental status change. The patient has a long history of schizophrenia and has been managed on a variety of antipsychotic therapies that have had some success, but the patient has not ever really achieved goal remission. Most recently he was started on a first generation antipsychotic along with benztropine (Cogentin). Today the patient is in the ED with confusion and muscle stiffness. Which o...

A 3-year-old child is being seen because the daycare facility staff have suggested to the parents that the child is having difficulty interacting with other children. Additionally, the staff have observed that when the child seems to become anxious or upset, he always becomes fixated on stacking building blocks one on top of the other to the extent that he will not acknowledge anyone or anything else. When the parents ask if their child has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the PMHNP advi...

Patients with a deficit in one of six neurocognitive domains to the extent that it represents a deterioration of function from their baseline and makes it impossible for them to live independently are diagnosed with major neurocognitive disorder. Which of the following is not one of the six neurocognitive domains? A. Learning and memory B. Language C. Perceptual motor D. Cognition and emotion --- YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9166JUmJLg&list=PLf0PF...

The PMHNP is called to consult on a patient in the emergency department who has been admitted following a traumatic motor vehicle/pedestrian accident. He was walking across the street when a speeding driver crashed into him at high speed. The patient remarkably does not have serious injuries, the staff noted that he seemed a bit “odd” and decided to call for a mental health consult. The patient lives alone, has no close friends or family members to call, and appears disinterested in any...

The PMHNP is counseling a patient who wants to enter treatment for a substance use disorder. The patient has been using methamphetamine for over one year and freely acknowledges how much he likes the way it makes him feel. However, he is realizing that it is destroying his marriage, his professional reputation, and his health. He genuinely wants to stop using it, and is willing to do whatever he has to do, but admit that he has tried twice before and relapsed. Both he and his significant othe...

A 50 -year-old female patient has been followed by the PMHNP for over 6 years for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, recurrent. The patient has achieved a successful remission on sertraline, 75 mg daily. Today presents complaining of an acute onset depressed mood, tearful days, and difficulty concentrating for the last month. It has become a problem at work, and her boss has suggested that she might need to take some time off to “take care of her problem.” Further discussio...

A patient with bipolar I disorder is currently being managed with lithium, 60 mg q.h.s. along with quetiapine 300 mg daily. The patient presents today for follow-up and reports that her mood has been very stable. Her work as a pastry chef has been really stressful around the holiday season, but she has handled it well and has no concerns about any mood deviations, either manic or depressive. She is sleeping approximately 7 hours nightly. Her last blood work was 7 months ago, and at the time t...

The PMHNP is seeing a patient who has been struggling with a collection of anxiety and depressive symptoms. She is resistant to pharmacotherapy and prefers to begin with a psychotherapy approach. As it turns out, the primary source of her symptoms is that she is married to a spouse in the military and has had to move thousands of miles from home, friends and family. An attempt to implement solution-focused therapy would include which of the following techniques? A. Motivational in...

A 64-year-old patient presents with new onset anxiety. She denies any history of anxiety disorder or any psychiatric disorder previously in her life, but for the last 9 months she has been having episodes that she describes as “attacks.” Out of the blue she will develop a sense of racing heart, hyperventilation, numbness and tingling in her arms, and feeling lightheaded. She worries about this a lot, and now worries virtually all the time about why this is happening. It is causing difficulty ...

The PMHNP is seeing a patient who presents with a chief complaint of feeling depressed. Further exploration reveals that while the patient does have several symptoms of a depressive episode, he does not quite meet criteria for any of the commonly encountered depressive disorders. The primary issue seems to center around the fact that the client feels as if his life has no meaning. He says he gets up, he gets dressed, goes to work, pays the bills, does all of the things he is supposed to do in...