[Various clinico-social aspects of differential diagnosis of schizophrenia]

Abstract

Fifty-six cases where the diagnosis of psychopathy was replaced by that of schizophrenia, 44 cases where the diagnosis of organic brain damage was replaced by schizophrenia, and 45 cases of the replacement of the diagnosis of schizophrenia by organic brain damage on repeated forensic psychiatry expert evaluation were subjected to a ++clinico-catamnestic analysis. The author describes the main ++clinico-social phenomena imitating some signs of the initially diagnosed disease and/or "overshadowing" criteria for the catamnestically verified pattern of psychopathology in psychopath-like conditions and delineates some combinations of such conditions. Proceeding from limited potentialities of " algorithms " of the diagnostic problems in psychiatry, especially with regard to the pathomorphosis as well as because of the complexity of forecasting particular signs and their number that may form a sufficient basis for correct or erroneous diagnosis in spite of a comparatively low incidence of the majority of the phenomena considered, all of them are regarded as practically significant.