Dementia and Schizophrenia?

Question

Would is be acceptable to classify schizophrenia as a form of dementia or would it be best to keep it totally separate?

Thanks guys.

Answer 1

It's now separate.

Once upon a time - perhaps up until 50 years ago - schizophrenia in young people was referred to as dementia praecox (I think the literal meaning is premature dementia). Then at some stage we had hebephrenic schizophrenia - childlike schizophrenia.

Nowdays all of those classifications are out.

It's now recognized that dementia includes a wide range of confusional states - some acute; some chronic. Some caused by physical illnesses and some organic brain disease.

Meanwhile it's understood that memory and even orientation are often quite intact in schizophrenia, which usually appears episodically. Also, people can achieve some recovery and at least some remission in schizophrenic symptoms.

In contrast, dementias (other than acute conditions due to some illness like a urinary tract infection) tend to be progressive.

Answer 2

Schizophrenia And Dementia

Answer 3

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RE:
Dementia and Schizophrenia?
Would is be acceptable to classify schizophrenia as a form of dementia or would it be best to keep it totally separate?

Answer 4

They are not at all the same thing. Dementia is not characterized by hallucinations, loss of ability to tell reality from fantasy, etc. Dementia is more about forgetting and inability to form new memories. Schizophrenia also typically onsets during the teen years and dementia by definition, is an old age disease. Dementia is a result of dying nerve cells in the brain, Schizophrenia is a result of "misfiring" of nerves. Totally separate.

Answer 5

Totally separate. In the past, schizophrenia was considered early-onset dementia (dementia praecox being its original name), but it's now clear that both are completely different diseases. Whether being schizophrenic puts one at a greater predisposition to developing dementia in the future is open for discussion but they're not the same thing at all.

Answer 6

They are totally separate. Dementia is a symptom of Alzheimer's and is related to memory loss. It is also related to difficulties with self-care and emotional change.
Schizophrenia is NOT multiple personalities. It is a serious mental illness that is associated with psychotic, positive symptoms, like delusions and hallucinations, as well as negative symptoms, like flat affect and social isolation. While some people with schizophrenia may be poor historians (can't remember certain events of their lives accurately), this memory loss is often due to the presence of their psychotic symptoms and not due to the neurological deficits characteristic of dementia.

Answer 7

It is seperate, schizophrenia is also a mental condition that usually makes a person hyperactive, afraid of things, seeing things that scare them...

Dimensia is a condition brought on by something, like a stroke, or age. It can also be brought on by taking the wrong medication when prescribed along with others or by itself a person can have a reaction to a medicine that brings on bouts of dimensia. But the person is disoriented about time, and recognizing people they once knew, they think they are in a different time or they literaly are in their minds therefore what they see could not be their daughter or son because they live in a time when they are only their babies yet..so they don't recognize them when they visit them sometimes. Sometimes they remember them.

They are two different things, one could have both conditions.

Answer 8

Seperate I have scizophrenia but don't suffer dementia at all I'm really quite sane since I'm on medication I've had for four years and I was a bit mental for the first couple years but now I'm fine I work(I'm actually the boss of my work) I have a life and a kid of my own. Where not all nutjobs with split personality ya know.

Answer 9

Totally separate. Dementia is memory loss over time. Alzheimer's is a form of Dementia. Schizophrenia has nothing to do with loss of memory but different personalities and periods of mania.

Answer 10

I wouldn't say that they are "totally separate". Symptoms such as: impairment of reasoning and judgment, Inability to focus and pay attention, altered visual perception, can be present in both, dementia and schizophrenia.