Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W Radziwiłłowicz.
The article includes research review in cognitive functions (attention, solving problems and language function) in dementia, depression and ageing. This paper focuses on neuropsychological and anatomical mechanism of progress of cognitive deficits. With reference to the quoted research we depict trends and dynamics of the distinguished cognitive functions.
Giving expert opinions within legal psychiatry in civil cases requires more and more strict co-operation of expert psychiatrists with psychologists. Assessment of the cognitive functions with the help of neuropsychological methods is an important diagnostic element that leads to giving the right opinion. The most frequent reasons for appointing experts in psychiatry and psychology are disorders of cognitive functions as a result of various brain injuries. Dementia syndromes are particularly often subjects of doubts in preparing expert opinions as they must be distinguished from other organic dysfunctions and from the age--associated memory impairment. Considering the evidence value the most important thing is to assess all the objective data included in the medical records and subsequently to assess the testimony of the witnesses Usually people from legal circles and families of the people who make declarations of will overvalue the importance of additional examinations. Those examinations are important but they do not settle the patient's psychic state because the decisive factor is not the kind of somatic disease but the influence of that disease on the psychic state. The neuropsychologist's role in giving medical statements is going to increase together with the tendency to objectivization and qualitative assessment of intensification of respective disorders of cognitive functions when examining patients in order to give expert opinions.
The presented paper discusses the orientation processes and simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability in patients with dementia and depression. The disturbances of the orientation processes and the simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability have proved characteristic of patients with dementia. The disorder of simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability constituted one of the cognitive limits in patients with dementia. Patients with dementia aided themselves with long-term memory and the retrieval processes ability in the orientation processes. In patients with dementia simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability, orientation processes, attention, short-term memory, retrieval processes decreased together with progression of the dementia processes. The simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability in patients with depression was maintained at a high level. Memory and visuospatial learning and simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability reflected aptly the level of the orientation processes in patients with depression. Only patients with depression helped themselves with the simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability in the orientation processes. In ageing simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability decreased together with age. Notional abstract thinking was related to the orientation processes and the simultaneous visuospatial synthesis ability only in those ageing.
Memory complaints are a common symptom among hospitalized depressed and brain damaged patients. In present work we attempted to identify factors that affected the severity and character of these complaints. 21 hospitalized psychiatric patients with diagnosis of major depressive disorder, and 21 patients with diffuse brain damage, participated in the study. They completed self-reported memory questionnaire, mood questionnaire and performed on neuropsychological memory tests. There were lower performance results on several memory tests in results the brain damaged group but no between-groups difference was found the in self-reported memory questionnaire. The results suggest that different factors contributed to subjectively experienced memory problems in each group. Current mood state and immediate memory deficit were the most important predictors in the depressed group. In brain damaged patients, memory complaints the were associated with delayed story recall problems and learning deficit.
This study is an attempt at approximating the question of transsexualism as a psycho-biological and socio-legal problem. The authors point out the role of genetic factors in sex determination and sexual features' differentiation. Social and educational environment plays a great role in forming of a psychical sex. However, the subjective feeling of sex is most probably biologically conditioned. Recognition of the problems connected with transsexualism may contribute to an improvement in quality of life of individuals suffering from disorders of sexual identification.
The thesis aims to answer the questions about the profile of mental ability in endogenous depression and to decide whether self-estimation of depressive symptoms influences the results achieved by patients in memory tests. Fifty six patients suffering from endogenous depression have been examined. The following methods have been applied: Mini Mental State Examination, Benton Visual Retention Test, Beck Depression Inventory, hold tests: Vocabulary, Information, Comprehension and Digit Span of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure, Auditory Verbal Learning Test, DCS Weidlich. General status of cognitive functions correlates with the profile of specific kinds of memory results, particularly with delayed memory. Self-estimation of depressive symptoms intensity is mostly influenced by memory capacity, visuomotorial factor, functions of perception and lingual factor. High correlation between verbal and non verbal learning shows uniform influence of depression on the process of learning.
Authors have analysed 120 inpatients who committed suicidal attempt. Diagnoses in 83 women and 37 men aged between 14 and 73 years according to DSM-V classification were analysed. Patients aged between 14 and 27 constituted 60%, while those more than 28 years old 40% of suicidal attempts. In the outcome of diagnoses the analysis showed that because of psychotic and nonpsychotic mental disturbances among them, patients after suicidal attempt needed scrutinised psychiatric and psychological evaluation. In consulted patients the clinical diagnoses distinguished: conversive reaction (54%), endogenous depression, dysthymic depression, personality disturbances characteropathic type and adolescent crises. Endogenous and dysthymic depression were predominantly found in persons above 28th, they constituted 26% of all diagnosed patients. In particular age groups no characteristic psychopathological diagnoses were found. The diagnosis of characteropathic type of personality disturbances was distributed most regularly.