[Common features in the signs of normal mental aging and senile dementia].

The symptoms of senile dementia are compared with the characteristics of psychopathology of old age and characteristics of the mental activity of normal elderly people. The clinical picture and course of schizophrenia with an early onset is analyzed in the development of senile dementia and in natural ageing. It has been shown that all those changes that old age brings into the mental life of normal and mentally ill people are expressed extremely markedly in senile dementia.