Unawareness of Physical Disability (Anosognosia)

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Psychiatrists constantly observe pathological attitudes towards mental and physical illness among their cases. At one end of the scale there are the hypochondriacal patients, with their increased awareness and over-emphasis of discomfort and deficiency; at the other end there are those who make light of, or even ignore, their disabilities. The psychiatrist is often faced with the task of modifying such abnormal attitudes. This aim can, in many cases, be achieved by psychotherapy, while in others physical treatment such as shock therapy or prefrontal leucotomy may prove successful. Both the abnormal attitudes towards illness and the success of treatment are as yet little understood. Possibly observations such as those on which we are going to report in this article may contribute to that problem. We refer to the symptoms of imperception and unawareness of gross physical disabilities in certain cases with lesions of the nervous system.