Pseudodementia. Current concepts and future directions.

The literature describing pseudodementia was reviewed and a definition for this neuropsychiatric syndrome is formulated. It is defined as an intellectual impairment in patients with a primary psychiatric disorder, in which the features of intellectual abnormality resemble, at least in part, those of a neuropathologically induced cognitive deficit. This neuropsychological impairment is reversible, and there is no apparent primary neuropathological process that leads to the genesis of this disturbance. Data from published reports and preliminary findings presented here suggest that intellectual impairment of patients with pseudodementia resembles subcortical dementia in many of its features.