[Hypo- and hyperdiagnosis of senile dementia and Alzheimer's disease in psychiatric practice].

A total of 714 brains from patients of predominantly advanced age who died in mental (n = 546) and somatic (n = 168) institutions have been examined macro- and microscopically. It has been found on the basis of accurate postmortem verification of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and senile dementia (SD) that in 20% of cases psychiatrists erroneously diagnose feeblemindedness in old age and in about the same proportion of cases they fail to diagnose the actual disease (most often AD and SD). The author has revealed a marked hyperdiagnosis of hypophrenias of vascular genesis at the expense of AD and SD whose rates are obviously underreported and which play a greater role in gerontopsychiatric practice than is generally accepted.