Confusion Mentalis

CONFUSSO MENTAL IS (confusion mentale according to French authors), confusion of consciousness, a symptom complex characterized by a disorder of the ability to orient oneself in time, the surrounding environment, and one's own position, simultaneously with extreme difficulty in the course of all intellectual processes (especially perception and assimilation of impressions and associative activity). Attention is sharply disturbed, as a result of which memory and reproduction also suffer; patients with great difficulty understand questions addressed to them and are unable to perform even simple mental operations. Speech is usually incoherent; sometimes there are also hallucinations. Patients are either lethargic, immobile, sometimes in a stuporous state, or are in a state of disordered motor restlessness, and emotionally they are either bewildered or apathetic and dull. The symptom complex is identical to the picture of amnesia (see): in French literature, this term became widespread and established under the influence of Meynert's teaching on amnesia; at present, it is used by most authors to denote conditions developing under the influence of toxic-infectious processes.