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Depression Induced Cognitive Impairment

  • Chapter
Dementia

Abstract

The terms pseudodementia, dementia syndrome of depression, coexisting dementia and depression, delirious mania and organic affective syndrome have all been used to label the co-occurrence of cognitive impairment and an affective disorder. Each term carries with it a point of view and assumes that cognitive and affective symptoms occur together more often than one would expect by chance and that one set of symptoms is primary. For example, the word pseudodementia implies that the depression (or some other psychiatric disorder) is primary and that the poor cognitive performance is an epiphenomenon of the primary condition; the label cognitive affective disorder (Ancill, 1989), on the other hand, implies that the cognitive disorder is primary and that the affective syndrome is secondary. In an attempt to clarify and objectify these implications and to offer a neutral label for the clinical states in which affective and cognitive symptoms co-occur, Reifler and co-workers (1982) proposed the labels Type 1 and Type 2 for these two possibilities. To date this suggestion has not been taken up by others.

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Authors
  1. P. V. Rabins
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  2. G. D. Pearlson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, UK

    Alistair Burns (Professor of Old Age Psychiatry) (Professor of Old Age Psychiatry)

  2. Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK

    Raymond Levy (Professor of Old Age Psychiatry) (Professor of Old Age Psychiatry)

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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Rabins, P.V., Pearlson, G.D. (1994). Depression Induced Cognitive Impairment. In: Burns, A., Levy, R. (eds) Dementia. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6805-6_41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6805-6_41

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4615-6807-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-6805-6

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