Obsolete medical term for the schizophrenia and autism spectrums
Not to be confused with Early onset dementia.
A monograph by Eugen Bleuler on dementia praecox (1911)
Dementia praecox (meaning a "premature dementia" or "precocious madness") is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. Over the years, the term dementia praecox was gradually replaced by the term schizophrenia, which initially had a meaning that included what is today considered the autism spectrum.
The term dementia praecox was first used by German psychiatrist Heinrich Schüle in 1880.[1]
It was also used in 1891 by Arnold Pick (1851–1924), a professor of psychiatry at Charles University in Prague.[2] In a brief clinical report, he described a person with a psychotic disorder resembling "hebephrenia" (an adolescent-onset psychotic condition).
German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) popularised the term dementia praecox in his first detailed textbook descriptions of a condition that eventually became a different disease concept later relabeled as schizophrenia.[3] Kraepelin reduced the complex psychiatric taxonomies of the nineteenth century by dividing them into two classes: manic-depressive psychosis and dementia praecox. This division, commonly referred to as the Kraepelinian dichotomy, had a fundamental impact on twentieth-century psychiatry, though it has also been questioned.[4]
The primary disturbance in dementia praecox was seen to be a disruption in cognitive or mental functioning in attention, memory, and goal-directed behaviour. Kraepelin contrasted this with manic-depressive psychosis, now termed bipolar disorder, and also with other forms of mood disorder, including major depressive disorder. He eventually concluded that it was not possible to distinguish his categories on the basis of cross-sectional symptoms.[5]
Kraepelin viewed dementia praecox as a progressively deteriorating disease from which no one recovered. However, by 1913, and more explicitly by 1920, Kraepelin admitted that while there may be a residual cognitive defect in most cases, the prognosis was not as uniformly dire as he had stated in the 1890s. Still, he regarded it as a specific disease concept that implied incurable, inexplicable madness.
^McNally K (December 2013). "Dementia praecox revisited". History of Psychiatry. 24 (4): 507–509. doi:10.1177/0957154X13501454. PMID 24573761. S2CID 206589195.
^Hoenig 1995, p. 337.
^Yuhas, Daisy (March 2013). "Throughout History, Defining Schizophrenia Has Remained a Challenge (Timeline)". Scientific American Mind (March 2013). Retrieved 2 March 2013.
Dementiapraecox (meaning a "premature dementia" or "precocious madness") is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating...
Kraepelin's term dementiapraecox since 1907. He revised and expanded his schizophrenia concept in his seminal study of 1911, DementiaPraecox, oder Gruppe...
(psychoses) such as paranoia, dementiapraecox, manic-depressive insanity and epilepsy (Emil Kraepelin's classification). Dementiapraecox was reconstituted as...
used the terms dementiapraecox (precocious dementia) and schizophrenia interchangeably. Since then, science has determined that dementia and schizophrenia...
"schizophrenia" to represent a revised disease concept for Emil Kraepelin's dementiapraecox. Whereas Kraepelin's natural disease entity was anchored in the metaphor...
century; the earliest case reports were in 1797 and 1809. Dementiapraecox, meaning premature dementia, was used by German psychiatrist Heinrich Schüle in 1886...
and autism spectrums - what others had considered "dementiapraecox". The term "dementiapraecox" was greatly popularised in 1899 through the sixth edition...
schizophrenia, dementiapraecox (the dementia part signifying the irreversible mental decline). It later became clear that dementiapraecox did not necessarily...
the brain - the individual typically remains conscious throughout. Dementiapraecox refers to a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized...
illness. The first of these, in 1884-1885 was what was then diagnosed as dementiapraecox (later known as paranoid schizophrenia or schizophrenia, paranoid type)...
Australia Thamnophilus praecox, the Cocha antshrike, a bird from Ecuador Persia praecox, a trilobite from Iran Dementiapraecox, a degenerative disease...
781–782. doi:10.1192/pb.21.12.781. "The very great majority of cases [of dementiapræcox] begin in the second or third decade; 57 per cent, of the cases made...
and work of Carl Gustav Jung, books and articles on the history of dementiapraecox and schizophrenia, and on anthropology on shamanism. His books and...
over time—such as catatonia, hebephrenia and dementia paranoides—under another existing term "dementiapraecox" (meaning "early senility", later renamed...
to name reduplicative paramnesia. He was the second to use the term dementiapraecox (in 1891). Pick trained in Berlin with Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal...
(contained in Experimental Researches, CW 2) 1907. The Psychology of DementiaPraecox (1st ed.). New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publ. Co. (Contained...
doubt on the reality of Kraepelin's dementiapraecox concept as a natural disease entity. What if dementiapraecox simply does not exist? he asked, also...
the treatment of chronic psychiatric disorders, most particularly dementiapraecox (increasingly known as schizophrenia from the 1910s, although the two...
psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin first distinguished between manic–depressive illness and "dementiapraecox" (now known as schizophrenia) in the late 19th century....
exhibited signs of avoidant personality disorder in his 1911 work DementiaPraecox: Or the Group of Schizophrenias. Avoidant and schizoid patterns were...
division of the major endogenous psychoses into the disease concepts of dementiapraecox, which was reformulated as schizophrenia by Eugen Bleuler by 1908,...
founding Moral Treatment. In 1809 he published the first description of dementiapraecox (schizophrenia). 1796 The York Retreat in England was founded by Quakers...
of psychotic illness. Particularly, he made the distinction between dementiapraecox (now called schizophrenia), manic depressive insanity and non-psychotic...
psychoses into manic depressive illness (now called bipolar disorder) and dementiapraecox (now called schizophrenia) was made by Emil Kraepelin, who attempted...
(a combination of symptoms that would soon become better known as dementiapraecox). French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot came to believe that psychological...
copies of his articles and his first book, the 1907 Psychology of DementiaPraecox, in which he upheld the Freudian psychodynamic viewpoint, although...
starting in 1911 as an alternative to the terms schizophrenia and dementiapraecox, which in his estimation did not correctly identify the underlying...
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