Paraphrenia and Late Paraphrenia

Abstract: Paraphrenia is a clinical entity described by Kraepelin in the eighth edition of his textbook in 1913. He formed this concept to define a group of patients who exhibited symptoms characteristic of dementia praecox, but with minimal disturbances of emotion and volition, and marked delusions with or without hallucinations. Herein the four subtypes of paraphrenia classified by Kraepelin and the prognostic research of Mayer, who studied the outcomes of patients reported by Kraepelin are described. After the publication of Mayer's study in 1921, the view to differentiate paraphrenia from schizophrenia was considered to be unfounded in Germany. In the 1950s, Roth in the U. K. examined patients over age 60 with delusional states and with/without hallucinations, and introduced late paraphrenia as a clinical entity. Although the term (late) paraphrenia present in the ICD‐9 is not included in the recent diagnostic criteria, many researchers recognize that the concept of (late) paraphrenia has not lost its usefulness for the diagnosis of psychotic disorders in old age. As in the days of Kraepelin, the problems concerning paraphrenia cannot be neglected when considering the classification of psychotic disorders.