Exam 5: Biological Context of Psychiatric Nursing Care

A couple tells a nurse that they are concerned about having children because there is bipolar disorder in first-degree relatives of each of them.What advice should the nurse give?

A patient with a history of depression reports not feeling well rested in recent weeks.Before making the assumption that the complaint is related to depression,a nurse should investigate whether the patient has had any recent changes in:

Which neurotransmitter is involved in the movement disorders seen in Parkinson disease and in the deficits seen in schizophrenia and other psychoses?

Pharmacogenetics will eventually allow researchers to do which of the following?

The spouse of a patient recently diagnosed with cancer asks,"What do you think about the relationship of stress and the development of cancer? My spouse has been under a huge amount of stress at work,and now they've diagnosed cancer." The answer that best reflects the current thinking about psychoneuroimmunology is:

A patient diagnosed with depression tells a nurse,"I don't feel rested.It's as though I didn't sleep at all." Comments by night shift staff show that the patient slept through most of the night.How can these two observations be reconciled?

A patient's spouse asks a nurse,"Why are they wasting money doing all these tests on my spouse? The hallucinations and delusions make the mental illness obvious!" The best reply would be:

The function of the limbic system is to:

Which neurotransmitter is located only in the brain,particularly in the raphe nuclei of the brainstem,and is implicated in depression?

A patient tells a nurse,"My daughter is pregnant with our first grandchild and my son-in-law has a sibling with cystic fibrosis.Is there a chance the baby might have this disease?" Which response is best?

What part of the brain is responsible for regulating pituitary hormones and is known to regulate the body's temperature?

Which part of the brain is responsible for fine motor coordination?

A patient demonstrates disoriented thinking and irrational ideas.A nurse can anticipate that a PET scan would most likely show dysfunction in the brain's _____ lobe.

A patient states,"I'm going to have a positron emission tomography (PET) scan.What are the doctors going to learn from it?" The best reply would be that they focus on:

A family member asks a mental health nurse,"I am reading a lot of information about gene therapy in the news lately.Will gene therapy be able to help my spouse,who has schizophrenia?" Which response by the nurse is best?

The objective information that has helped mental health professionals understand that schizophrenia has a biological component has been obtained primarily from which of the following?

A nurse explains to a patient undergoing diagnostic testing which brain imaging technique measures brain structure?

A genetic counselor is called to see patients with genetic questions or concerns.With which patient would it be most appropriate for the counselor to speak?

When a patient asks the nurse,"What are neurotransmitters?" The nurse replies that neurotransmitters are:

A patient tells a nurse,"My doctor thinks my problem is serious but it can be treated with medications.Does that mean I'll always have to be treated with drugs?" The nurse replies: