Cognitive Disruptions
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Introduction
Confusion
meds!
depression
infection
fatigue
trauma
intoxication
malnutrition
Delusions
Delusions are fixed, falsed belief out of keeping with a person's background and firmly held despite incontroverable evidence to the contrary. To call them delusions, one needs evidence that belief is false and patient is unshakeable.
Common delusions include:
- persecucatory: belief that others are trying to cause harm
- delusions of reference: interpreting publicly known events or celebrities as having direct reference/significance to the patient
- erotomania: belief that another is in love with the patient
- grandoise: belief of an inflated sense of self-worth or power
- religious: belief of receiving powers or instructions from a higer being, or of being a higher being
- somatic: belief one has a physical problem
- nihilistic: belief that things do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal
Hallucinations
Hallucinations are sensory perceptions in the absence of external stimuli. There are similar in quality to a true perception; that is, people can easly think they are real.
Auditory hallucinations are the most common. Others include visual, gustatory, olfactory, or tactile.
If people seem to be looking at something, say "what's going on?"
A good way to screen is:
"Sometimes people see/hear things that other people don't seem to notice. Does this ever happen to you?"
Depersonalization
Depersonalization is a loss of sense of self; person feels unreal, detached from his or her body, and/or unable to feel emotion.
Impulsivity
Related to self-control, and potentially labile mood?
Poor impulse control can be related to structural brain disease
Aphasia
Aphasia can often follow a sudden
Word-finding problems are common in dementia
Broca's Aphasia
Wernicke's Aphasia
can have
Paraphasic errors
- anemic(sp) - clable instead of table
- semantic - substituting one word for another
Apraxia
Loss of ability to carry out familiar, purposeful movements in the absence of paralysis. It is especially related to objects such as hammers or pens.
Idiomotor apraxia -
cannot copy what the testor does
Agnosia
Agnosia is the failure to recognize or identify objects in someone whose senses work fine.
Resources and References
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