Write the mental state examination you actually observed.
MHABot turns your observations into clean clinical prose in seconds. It writes up what you record and nothing else — no diagnosis, no risk score, no invented detail.
Three passes, about six minutes
Built around the sequence you already use — because the examination has an order, and the note should follow it.
What comes out
A synthetic example. Every phrase below traces back to something a clinician selected — the tool adds structure and grammar, never content.
Context
The patient is a man in his early thirties, seen in a health-based place of safety in North London. He was brought for assessment by police and is known to a local community mental health team.
Appearance and behaviour
He was dishevelled, with unkempt hair and clothing that was not suitable for the weather. Eye contact was intermittent. He was restless throughout, pacing and unable to remain seated. He was initially overfamiliar on introduction but settled during the interview.
Speech
Speech was increased in quantity and rapid in rate, and was difficult to interrupt. Volume was raised. Articulation was clear.
Mood and affect
He described his mood as elevated, rating it 8 out of 10, and said: “I've never felt sharper.” Affect was observed to be expansive and labile, and was congruent with his stated mood.
Thought
Thought form showed flight of ideas; his account was difficult to follow at several points. Grandiose ideas were elicited. No thoughts of self-harm or suicide were disclosed on direct questioning.
Clinical guides
Long-form pieces on writing the examination, formulating risk, and the language that goes into a psychiatric record.
Questions clinicians ask
If something here is unclear, that is worth telling us about.
What is a Mental State Examination?
The MSE is a structured way of observing and describing a person's mental functioning at a point in time. It runs across eight domains — appearance and behaviour, speech, mood, affect, thought, perception, cognition, and insight and judgement. It records what you observed during the assessment, as distinct from the history, which is what you were told.
Does MHABot diagnose, or suggest a diagnosis?
No, and it is built so that it cannot. It does not diagnose, does not produce a differential, does not score or stratify risk, and does not recommend treatment or any action under the Mental Health Act. It arranges the observations you record into clinical prose. Every sentence traces back to something you selected.
That is a deliberate design line rather than a missing feature. Software that suggests a diagnosis is very likely a medical device under the UK Medical Devices Regulations, with everything that follows from it.
Where does the assessment go?
Nowhere. The note is assembled by code running in your browser, and the PDF and Word files are generated there too. Our database has no field capable of holding an assessment. What we store is an account, a session and a count of notes written.
The trade-off is honest: notes live in your browser's storage, so clearing your browsing data deletes them and we cannot recover them. Export anything you need to keep.
Why is there no risk score?
Because current UK guidance says there should not be one. NICE guideline NG225 advises against using risk assessment tools and scales to predict suicide or repetition of self-harm, and against sorting people into low, medium or high risk to decide who gets treatment or discharge.
The evidence behind that is uncomfortable: work from the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health found that most people who went on to die by suicide had been judged low risk or no risk at their final contact with services. MHABot supports a narrative risk formulation and safety planning instead.
What is the consistency check?
As you work, MHABot compares your entries against a fixed set of rules and tells you when two of them sit oddly together — elevated mood recorded alongside flat affect, say, or a person recorded as mute whose tone of voice has also been described.
Each flag shows the rule it applied, so you can judge it yourself. They are prompts to look again, never clinical opinions, and many flagged combinations are entirely real findings that simply deserve a deliberate sentence.
Who is it for?
Qualified clinicians — psychiatrists, doctors on psychiatry rotations, mental health nurses, psychologists, approved mental health professionals — and students and trainees working under supervision. It is not for members of the public and not for self-assessment.
Does it record patient identifiers?
It does not ask for any, and you should not add any. The intake takes an age band, an area, and the setting you saw the person in. No name, no date of birth, no NHS number, no address. Keep free text clinically relevant and non-identifying.
What does it cost?
The first few notes are free, with no card details asked for. After that a subscription lifts the limit. Cancel at any time.