engleski

Syndrome of dementia in depression

Trying to help the depressive patients we often hear their complaints which can be considered as the ‘syndrome of dementia’. These complaints are: the lack of concentration, forgetfulness and complete cognitive inability. The most important question of this article is the relation between the depressive states and the manifestation of the ‘demential syndrome’. In our approach to this problem the authors consider the notion ‘pseudoodementia’ used to describe the demential syndrome in psychiatric disturbances, where the accentuation is on the ‘lack of organic brain lesion’. Starting from the ‘depressive pseudo-dementia’, the leading point in the investigation was the notion ‘dementia induced by depression’, actually ‘the depressive dementia syndrome’ (Folstein and McHugh, 1978) where the accent is on the reversible demented states induced by depression. In our investigation we discussed the effect of the change of depressive affect due to the use of anti-depressive pharmacotherapy (Maprolitin) and consequently the effect on the demential syndrome which was evident through the depressive episode. The objective measuring of the demential syndrome was made by means of the neuropsychological interrogation. The acquired resuits of the neuropsychological testing are in accordance with the resuits recently published in the literature, showing no evident outbursts in the brain cortical regions. In accordance with the resuits of Wells (1979) we had a great variability of the resuits in the field of neuropsychological abilities, what represents the specific phenomena present in ‘depressive dementia’. The qualitative analysis of the resuits shows the accordance with the resuits of Caine (1981), concerning the selective disturbances in mental speed and spontaneous elaboration. In investigating the patients' statements about memory disturbances we noticed that the secondary phenomena are essentially due to the dysfunction of attention and that subjective appreciation of the memory during the depressive episode was not followed by the adequate findings in the objective measuring of the memory function.

syndrome of dementia; pseudo-dementia; depression

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