Paraphrenia and Persecutory Delusions: Brief Reflection about Neuropsychology Evaluation in the Elderly without Dementia

Naming psychiatric disorders began long go with Hippocrates in 460-377 (b.c.). Pinel and Esquirol in the eighteenth century also proposed new concepts to classify psychiatric illnesses based on observations and data systematization. Nineteenth century, Kraepelin modified the classification, based also on observation and organization of symptoms. This is where the term early dementia came from. Later Bleuler changed the term Early Dementia to Schizophrenia because the prognosis would not necessarily be negative [1-3]. Paranoid disorders, delusions and hallucinations are terms described from the beginning of psychiatry to explain and classify the behavior of patients in clinics and hospitals. Renowned names like Martin Roth, Emil Kraepelin, Kahlbaum and Felix Post among others presented to psychogeriatrics the concept of psychosis and alterations of thought that occur in elderly; the term paraphrenia was born [4,5]. The term “Paraphrenia” is not used in the current DSM-5 edition [6].