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Late paraphrenia: a variant of schizophrenia manifest in late life or an organic clinical syndrome? A review of recent evidence
Author(s) -
Roth Martin,
Kay D. W. K.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1166(1998110)13:11<775::aid-gps868>3.0.co;2-e
Subject(s) - neuropathology , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychology , thought disorder , brain disease , disease , cognition , psychiatry , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , medicine , pathology
A large amount of research has been devoted during the past 15 years to the clinical and neurobiological aspects of the disorder named as ‘late paraphrenia’ (LP) in 1955. The symptomatology and diagnosis of the disorder, its prognosis, the cognitive functioning of those affected, the structural changes in the brain as revealed by modern techniques of brain imaging and its postmortem neuropathology have all been submitted to investigation. The results have been widely regarded as consistent with the concept of LP as an organic disease of the brain, but increased knowledge of the neurobiology of schizophrenia and of the age‐related changes that occur in the brains of elderly people casts doubt on the validity of this interpretation. The findings are consistent with the view that LP is the form in which schizophrenia is manifest in old age. The proposal that LP has a closer kinship with affective disorder than with schizophrenia is part of a general theory of the sex differences in schizophrenia. In LP it becomes entangled with the organicity hypothesis, suggesting that neither of these explanations is adequate, and most of the evidence points to a unitary concept which views LP as a variant of a single disorder, namely schizophrenia, which, however, requires a broad definition. This concept has implications for fresh paths of enquiry. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.