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The DSM IV (the U.S. manual for diagnosing mental disorders) would indicate that a person with pure Dementia Animus (and no other problems) has Schizophrenia.

They would need to have two of the following - delusions (yes), hallucinations (yes), disorganized speech (no), grossly disorganized or catatonic behaviour (no), negative symptoms - that is not speaking much, being unemotional, an absence of behaviour etc. (no).

They would also need to have - social/occupational dysfunction (yes), duration of more than 6 months (yes), not be diagnosed with schizoaffective or mood disorder (probably not, so yes to this too), no previous developmental disorder (again, probably not, so another yes).

They would probably have the type I variety, as defined by the following symptoms, of which they would not need to have all - hallucinations, delusions, derailment of associations (this they would probably not have - it basically means that someone is talking gibberish that makes no sense, with each element failing to follow from the previous one - "word salad". This is different from speaking logically about something that isn't "real"), bizarre behaviour, minimal cognitive impairment, and sudden onset. Our poor sufferer of dementia animus would have all of these barring the derailment of associations. For a type I diagnosis they would also need to respond well to drugs, have limbic system abnormalities and normal brain ventricles. Prosaic reality would conveniently provide those limbic system abnormalities, and wouldn't it be amusing if the drugs actually "worked" and brought the person back to prosaic reality, at least temporarily. More likely though, the drugs wouldn't work, which is usually Type II, but Type II has a lot of symptoms like catatonia, apathy and cognitive impairment which dementia animus alone wouldn't cause. Not to mention the fact that Type II schizophrenics often do things like hold bizarre postures for hours at a time (I suppose this could be caused by dementia animus if something in mythic reality required you to hold a pose, but honestly, there is something about the Type II kind of schizophrenia that _really_ doesn't fit with someone reacting logically to weird information).

Of the five subtypes, they would probably be diagnosed with either Undifferentiated Schizophrenia (a mix of changing symptoms of primary schizophrenia, often with perplexity, confusion, emotional turmoil, delusions of reference, excitement, dream-like autism, depression and fear), or with Paranoid schizophrenia (absurd, illogical and changeable delusions, vivid hallucinations, impairment of critical judgement, erratic, unpredictable and occasionally dangerous behaviour, less disorganisation of behaviour and less extreme social withdrawal than other types).

Our poor person with dementia animus is now on drugs, and possibly institutionalised. Thanks to the trend to deinstitutionalisation, though, if they can take care of themselves and don't seem to be dangerous to themselves or others, they'd probably be living at home on an outpatient basis. Or, more likely, they'd fall through the cracks and end up homeless on the streets thanks to their inability to navigate the normal world of jobs and rent and all that, much like many of the mentally ill in the real world.

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Page last modified on August 02, 2005, at 05:25 PM by DoyceTesterman

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