About 25% of all schizophrenic patients may be misdiagnosed and instead suffer from juvenile dementia
Abstract
A minority of neurologists is convinced that the disease "dementia praecox" first described by Emil Kraepelin in 1899 is still valid and its annexation by psychoanalysis and later by psychiatry has caused severe damage. The psychoanalytic extremist Eugen Bleuler had successfully annexed all conceivable mental conditions for Freud's couch therapy and had withdrawn them from medical research by his own postulates, which could never be proven. A recent further study now supports Kraepelin's once discarded thesis in a new way. This gives rise to a commentary by physicians on the clinical front.