Worry lasting eight months satisfies five generalized anxiety criteria in this MN661 Unit 2 analysis, while the substance and medical exclusion stays open until caffeine and thyroid are checked. Searches like "mn 661 unit 2 assignment example", "mn661 unit 2 sample" and "mn661 unit 2 example" land here.
Diagnostic Criteria Analysis: Eight Months of Worry in a 36-Year-Old Paralegal
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MN661: PMHNP Psychopathological Disorders and Psychotherapy
Unit 2 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Composite patient written as a model document. No real person is described.
Case Summary
A composite 36-year-old paralegal describes eight months of worrying "about everything, all the time": missing court filing deadlines, her parents' health, a car loan and whether her lease will be renewed. She says she lies awake running through lists and feels "wound up" most days. Her jaw and shoulders ache by the afternoon, and she is tired by midmorning. She tried setting aside a half-hour each evening for worrying, as a coworker suggested, and gave it up within a week because "it spilled into the rest of the night anyway." She drinks about five cups of coffee a day, more on deadline days. She has no panic attacks, no fear of social situations in particular and no repetitive rituals. A thyroid panel was ordered by her primary care provider last week and is pending.
Criteria Table
Each row gives the requirement in brief, the reported evidence and a verdict, following the DSM-5-TR criteria for generalized anxiety disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).
A. Excessive worry about several matters, more days than not, for at least six months. Evidence: worry about work, her parents, money and housing on most days for eight months. Verdict: met.
B. Difficulty controlling the worry. Evidence: her attempt to confine worry to a half-hour, abandoned within a week because "it spilled into the rest of the night." Verdict: met.
C. At least three of six symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, poor concentration, irritability, muscle tension, sleep disturbance. Evidence: restlessness ("wound up"), fatigue by midmorning, jaw and shoulder tension, difficulty falling asleep. Concentration and irritability: not reported when asked. Verdict: met, four of six.
D. Clinically significant distress or impairment. Evidence: she has asked for help, reports distress most days and has missed two deadlines because she could not settle to work. Verdict: met.
E. Not attributable to a substance or another medical condition. Evidence: five cups of coffee a day, and a thyroid panel pending. Caffeine in that quantity and an overactive thyroid can each produce restlessness, poor sleep and anxiety, so this criterion cannot yet be judged met. Verdict: undetermined.
F. Not better explained by another mental disorder. Evidence: see below. Verdict: met on current information.
Criterion F: Alternatives Weighed
Social anxiety disorder was considered and rejected, because her worry is not centered on being judged by others in social situations. Obsessive-compulsive disorder was considered and rejected, because her worries are about real-life concerns rather than intrusive, unwanted thoughts, and she has no rituals. Panic disorder was rejected because she has had no panic attacks. Her score on the GAD-7, a brief screening measure, was 13, in the moderate range, which supports but does not establish the diagnosis (Spitzer et al., 2006).
Conclusion
Provisional diagnosis: generalized anxiety disorder, provisional pending criterion E. Two checks are needed before the qualifier can be removed. First, the pending thyroid panel must be reviewed, since hyperthyroidism commonly presents with nervousness, tremor, poor sleep and fatigue (Ross et al., 2016). Second, she agrees to reduce coffee gradually to one or two cups a day over two weeks, and her symptoms are reassessed after that; if restlessness and poor sleep resolve substantially, a caffeine-related anxiety disorder would need to be considered instead.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Publishing.
Ross, D. S., Burch, H. B., Cooper, D. S., Greenlee, M. C., Laurberg, P., Maia, A. L., Rivkees, S. A., Samuels, M., Sosa, J. A., Stan, M. N., & Walter, M. A. (2016). 2016 American Thyroid Association guidelines for diagnosis and management of hyperthyroidism and other causes of thyrotoxicosis. Thyroid, 26(10), 1343-1421. https://doi.org/10.1089/thy.2016.0229
Spitzer, R. L., Kroenke, K., Williams, J. B. W., & Löwe, B. (2006). A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: The GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 166(10), 1092-1097. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092
How this MN661 Unit 2 example is structured
The case summary is written first and carries no diagnostic vocabulary, so the table cannot be accused of reading a conclusion back into the history. Every row keeps one grammar: requirement, evidence, verdict, then a sentence of reasoning wherever the verdict needs defending. Absent features are recorded as carefully as present ones, and concentration and irritability are named as unreported instead of being silently skipped. Criterion B, difficulty controlling the worry, rests on her statement that she tried setting aside a worry half-hour and abandoned it within a week, which is evidence rather than assertion. Under the table, a paragraph on criterion F explains why social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder were weighed and rejected, one sentence each. The provisional label closes the paper, followed by the two checks needed before it could drop that qualifier.
Get an MN661 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
Paste the case from your Unit 2 prompt, naming the disorder it points toward if it points anywhere; some MN661 sections leave the diagnosis for the analysis to reach. Include the rubric; the first analysis is written free within 24-48h to those instructions, criteria in rows, each verdict tied to a reported feature, and open exclusions left open. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
MN661 Unit 2 questions, answered
Can a criteria analysis end without a diagnosis?
Yes, and some cases are built so that it should. If an exclusion cannot be assessed from the information supplied, a provisional diagnosis with the missing check named is the accurate result. Instructors in this course tend to reward that honesty over a tidy conclusion that ignores the gap, provided the paper states exactly what information would close it.
Is a table required, or can the analysis be prose?
Follow the prompt. Where the format is open, a table makes the criterion-to-feature mapping easy to audit, and prose beneath it carries the reasoning a grid cannot. Where prose is required, the same discipline holds: name each criterion briefly, quote the feature supporting it, and give a verdict before moving to the next one.
Which edition of the manual should be cited?
The current text is DSM-5-TR, published in 2022, and citing it by name and year shows the source is current. The generalized anxiety criteria did not change in substance from DSM-5, but other sections did, and prolonged grief disorder was added. An older edition cited without comment suggests the source was never checked against the revision.