Some thoughts about the epidemiology and etiology of mental disorders /part 3/

For its construction, it is sometimes necessary to disrupt a wide range of mental spheres or even the whole mental activity. Its complex mechanisms of emergence, manifestation, flow, transformation and ending are inherent. Functional and organic, primary and secondary, local and general, subjective and objective, somatic, neurological and mental, etc. are distinguished. symptoms. Psychiatry also poses positive symptoms that are a sign of weakening, amplifying or excitement of certain mental functions, such as hallucinations and delusions.

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In the case of negative symptoms, there is a certain drop in certain mental functions such as a decrease in energy potential, permanent change of personality, emotional devastation with irreversible weakening of memory and intellect leading to initial or profound dementia. Psychological symptoms also include various forms of insomnia, irritability, emotional changes, mood, memory, intellect, thinking, and so on.

Separate psychic symptoms are illusions, hallucinations, delusions, obsessions, impulsive manifestations, etc. As a rule there are no isolated and isolated symptoms. They always arise in certain legal patterns that form complexes, referred to as syndromes. The syndrome is a higher integrating whole or unity. Typically, the syndromes are polysymptotic, but there are also monosymptoms. In the complex complex of symptoms, one of them may be a leader forming the nucleus and giving the name of the syndrome. Depending on their characteristics, the syndromes are: functional and organic, transient or persistent (in a stable picture, the term "condition" is spoken).

For the identification of a mental disorder knowledge is needed except for symptoms, signs and syndromes, but also additional knowledge - data on heredity, the probable course of the condition of a syndrome, the possible complications, methods of treatment, etc. The highest form of conceptualization is the term "disease" in the narrow sense - it implies the knowledge of all the important elements of the causes of a condition and of the changes it causes; how these changes are transformed into complaints (symptoms), probable course, response, and so on.