Alleviation of severe emotional symptoms by carbidopa-levodopa, MSD, in a Parkinson's patient: a personal report.

This is a personal account of the rapid disappearance of long-term severe emotional symptomatology following the diagnosis of parkinsonism and the beginning of Sinemet medication. It raises two questions. First, can mental health practitioners be sensitized to earlier detection and diagnosis of parkinsonism by reviewing the specific patterns of emotional disturbances in older patients? Second, is there a presymptomatic psychiatric syndrome in parkinsonism that is more akin to a global emotional instability than to a depressive state?