What is Organic Personality Disorder?
It is believed that organic personality disorders develop in 5-10% of patients with epilepsy with a disease duration of more than 10 years. There may be an inverse correlation between the degree of increase in the disorder and the frequency of seizures.
Causes of Organic Personality Disorders
The cause is epilepsy, severe and repeated traumatic brain injuries, encephalitis, cerebral palsy, to which somatic disorders join.
Symptoms of Organic Personality Disorder
Six or more months are characterized by characterological changes, which are either expressed as a whole in the sharpening of premorbid personality traits, or in the appearance of torpidity, viscosity, bradyphrenia (glichroidia). In an emotional background, either unproductive euphoria (moria) or dysphoria. Often in the later stages – emotional lability or apathy. The threshold of passion is low, and a slight stimulus can cause a flash of aggression. In general, control over impulses and impulses is lost. There is no prognosis of one’s own behavior in relation to others; suspicion and paranoia are characteristic. Statements are stereotyped, flat and monotonous jokes are characteristic. Although the early stages of memory disorders are not characteristic, they can progress, and in this case we should talk about dementia.
Diagnosis of Organic Personality Disorder
Based on the identification of the underlying disease and typical emotional, cognitive and characterological changes. In addition to medical history or other evidence of a disease, brain damage, or dysfunction, a reliable diagnosis requires the presence of 2 or more features:
- a significant decrease in the ability to cope with focused activities;
- emotional lability (from euphoria to dysphoria), sometimes apathy;
- expressions of needs and drives arise without taking into account the consequences or social conventions (antisocial orientation);
- suspicion or paranoid ideas (usually abstract content);
- change in the rate of speech production, viscosity and hypergraphy;
- a change in sexual behavior.
Differential diagnosis
It should be differentiated from dementia, in which personal disorders are combined more often with memory impairments, with the exception of dementia in Peak’s disease. Most accurately, organic personality disorders are differentiated from dementia on the basis of neuropsychological studies, neurological data, CT and EEG.
Treatment for Organic Personality Disorder
The treatment is based on the use of nootropics (nootropil, phenibut, glutamic acid, encephabol, aminalon) in combination with drugs that help control impulses: carbamazepine, lithium (lithium carbonate, kontemnol, lithinol), beta-blockers, small doses of antipsychotics.