ABSTRACT
Introduction ................................................................ 142 Why is this relevant to you? ......................................... 144 Dementia .................................................................... 145 Alzheimer’s disease ..................................................... 146 Vascular dementia ....................................................... 150 Lewy body dementia ................................................... 151 Frontotemporal dementia ............................................. 152 Potentially treatable dementias ..................................... 153
Assessment and management of dementia ................... 154 Other investigations ..................................................... 155 Diagnosis ................................................................... 156 Management .............................................................. 156 Delirium ..................................................................... 158 Delirium tremens ........................................................ 162 Summary ................................................................... 163 Further reading ........................................................... 163
Organic disorders are those disorders that have an underlying physical or pathological cause. is commonly means medical, neurodegenerative or drug-related disorders (excluding those related to substance misuse). Disorders where there is no currently understood pathophysiological cause are oen called functional disorders. A wide range of physical conditions can present with or cause psychiatric symptoms or syndromes. e two most common organic disorders, dementia and delirium, are the focus of this chapter. Other organic disorders are well recognized and details of some of these are given in Table 12.1. is is not exhaustive and only describes their psychiatric presentations. When learning about physical
disorders, it is important to develop appropriate knowledge of the psychiatric symptoms and presentations of that disorder as well as the physical symptoms, signs and investigation results, especially in common or easily treatable disorders, e.g. thyroid disease.
