Aetiological Heterogeneity of Schizophrenia: The Problem and the Evidence

When Kraepelin formulated the concept of dementia praecox, he lumped together a number of diagnostic categories. One of his reasons for doing so was that he had seen many patients who ended up in the same kind of demented state, even though their initial symptoms might have been quite different. He...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:British journal of psychiatry 1990-07, Vol.157 (1), p.119-122
Main Authors: Dalén, Per, Hays, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Affective disorders
Biological and medical sciences
Dementia
Dementia disorders
Emotions
Humans
Mania
Medical sciences
Mental disorders
Paresis
Point of View
Psychiatrists
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Psychoses
Risk Factors
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia - etiology
Schizophrenia - genetics
Schizophrenic Psychology
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Summary:When Kraepelin formulated the concept of dementia praecox, he lumped together a number of diagnostic categories. One of his reasons for doing so was that he had seen many patients who ended up in the same kind of demented state, even though their initial symptoms might have been quite different. He noted that even some cases presenting with mania, or melancholia, took the same downhill course as did the more classic cases of dementia praecox. Kraepelin, aware of the striking paradigm of general paresis, stated that “a single morbid process” explained the downhill course (Kraepelin, 1983, p. 68).
ISSN:0007-1250
1472-1465
DOI:10.1192/bjp.157.1.119