Dementia Praecox - Kraepelin's Influence On The Next Century

Kraepelin's Influence On The Next Century

In the 1899 (6th) edition of Psychiatrie, Kraepelin established a paradigm for psychiatry that would dominate the following century, sorting most of the recognized forms of insanity into two major categories: dementia praecox and manic-depressive illness. Dementia praecox was characterized by disordered intellectual functioning, whereas manic-depressive illness was principally a disorder of affect or mood; and the former featured constant deterioration, virtually no recoveries and a poor outcome, while the latter featured periods of exacerbation followed by periods of remission, and many complete recoveries. The class, dementia praecox, comprised the paranoid, catatonic and hebephrenic psychotic disorders, and these forms are still found today in the DSM-IV-TR's paranoid, catatonic and disorganized types of schizophrenia. The ICD-10 still uses "hebephrenic" to designate the third type. These subtypes may be dropped from the next edition of the DSM, DSM-V, due to be published in May 2013.