Mental diseases: a public health problemMay, James Vance
Science
Mental diseases: a public health problem
May, James Vance
Mental health services; Psychology, Pathological
sometimes accompany growths in the posterior lobes. Kraepelin has also
observed hallucinations in cases with tumor of the cerebellum. Many
develop hypochondriacal ideas, others have delusions of persecution or
self-accusation and suicidal tendencies. Rarely there are delusions of
grandeur. The mood is usually anxious, depressed and at times
irritable or apathetic. Occasionally the patients may, on the other
hand, be cheerful in spite of the hopeless condition they are in.
They may even show distractibility, flight of ideas, volubility and
excitement. There is more often a childish elation with a tendency to
joking and facetiousness. Schuster found this more common in frontal
involvements. Kraepelin also called attention to restlessness and
excitements often leading to violence. This may alternate with mental
dulness and cataleptic states. The patients may repeat words and make
meaningless response to questions, strongly suggesting katatonia.
Mental dulness becomes more and more marked, however, even reaching
a stuporous stage. To this is added, according to the location of
the growth, focal symptoms of various kinds—headache, disturbance
of vision, seizures, paralyses, aphasia, agraphia, articulatory
disturbance, ataxia, etc. Special symptoms arise where psychogenic
factors play a part,—excitements with paralyses or disturbance of
perception, etc. Hysterical stigmata may appear. Cases with growths in
the frontal region occasionally simulate general paresis but should be
distinguished without difficulty.
The Association's statistical manual has the following to say of
psychoses with brain tumor:—
"A large majority of brain tumor cases show definite mental symptoms.
Most frequent are mental dullness, somnolence, hebetude, slowness in
thinking, memory failure, irritability and depression, although a
tendency to facetiousness is sometimes observed. Episodes of confusion
with hallucinations are common; some cases express suspicions and
paranoid ideas.
"The diagnosis must rest in most cases on the neurological symptoms,
and these will depend on the location, size and rate of growth of
the tumor. Certain general physical symptoms due to an increased
intracranial pressure are present in most cases, viz.: headache,
dizziness, vomiting, slowing of the pulse, choked disc and interlacing
of the color fields."
The number of cases reaching hospitals for mental diseases is, of
course, small. In 49,640 first admissions to the New York state
hospitals in eight years there were sixty-seven cases (.14 per cent)
of psychoses with brain tumor. In 18,336 admissions to twenty-one
hospitals in fourteen other states there were eighteen cases (.09 per
cent) diagnosed as psychoses with brain tumor. There were ninety-three
cases (.13 per cent) in 70,987 first admissions to forty-eight
hospitals for mental diseases in sixteen different states.
_Psychoses with Other Brain or Nervous Diseases_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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