[Clinical aspects of hysteria at the psychiatric clinic of the Fann University Hospital Center. Apropos of a prospective study of 121 cases].

This work was done at the Psychiatry Service of CHU of Fann in Dakar during the year 1994. It is a transversal study made by inquiry on the basis of a questionnaire centered on the clinical description and the starting factors in a population of 1025 adult-patients, received on external consultation. It enabled its authors to realize that hysteria was the second cause of consultation after schizophrenias. The starting factors of troubles are mainly conflicts (disturbance of inter-personal relationship) in 49.6% of the cases, and difficulties of daily life, causing annoyance and stress. On the clinical level, polymorphism of the hysterical signs has been found out as much in the level of paroxysmal signs, as in the level of lasting signs. The frequency of big Charcot attacks, often considered as unusual, has been observed in this study in 10% of the patients. Moreover, on the level of the personality structure, only 103 patients have been identified (i.e. 85.1%) to have shown a hysterical personality type.