Secondary Dementia

SECONDARY DEMENTIA, dementia se-cundaria, a name given during the period of symptological direction to states of progressive mental weakness that developed after acute psychoses, when the latter did not end in recovery. From the modern viewpoint, this collective group consisted of outcome states of psychotic processes (most often schizophrenia, but also epilepsy, alcohol-induced insanity, etc.). However, it did not include cases of organic dementia in the narrow sense of the word, i.e., states that developed during such diseases as progressive paralysis, senile psychoses, etc. Among the individual types of S. D., first of all, special position was occupied by states of mental disability, which represented the result of so-called 'recovery with defect' and were characterized mainly by a decline in initiative and emotional dullness with formally correct behavior and absence of gross intellectual disorders. States of secondary insanity were выделены into a separate group, when delusional thoughts expressed by patients during the acute period of the disease did not disappear with the transition to a chronic outcome state, but became only, like all other manifestations of patients, stereotyped and devoid of affective coloring. The remaining cases, which in turn were divided into two groups—apathetic and agitated dementia—were characterized by features of profound mental disintegration: these are the states of personality depletion when all interests fade, delusions pale, and the behavior of patients becomes completely stereotyped.