Am J Psychiatry 1989; 146:459-463
Copyright © 1989 by American Psychiatric Association
The diagnostic implications of formal thought disorder in mania and schizophrenia: a reassessment
VC Jampala, MA Taylor and R Abrams
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Health Sciences, Chicago Medical School, IL 60064.
The authors compared nine manic patients exhibiting formal thought
disorders (tangentiality, neologisms, drivelling, private use of words, and
paraphasias) with 102 manic patients without these thought disorders and
with 31 schizophrenic patients. Manic patients with formal thought
disorders tended to have more "schizophrenic" symptoms than did manic
patients without formal thought disorders, but both groups improved
significantly more during the index episode than did the schizophrenic
patients. Although the prevalence of flight of ideas was high in mania,
narrowly defined formal thought disorder was rare, suggesting that precise
definition and description of thought disorders would be helpful in
distinguishing mania from schizophrenia.
