Wilhelm Mayer’s follow-up study of Kraepelin’s cases of paraphrenia: diagnostic validity in 1921

Kendler, Kenneth S.

doi:10.1038/s41380-022-01763-9

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“…Note that she examined not only total burden, but also the four categories of her burden (mental illness, alcoholism, nervous conditions, and peculiar characteristics), obtaining the same negative findings in each analysis. The next time a broadly similar study was performed—using family data to try to assess the similarity or differences of psychiatric syndromes—was, to our knowledge, in 1921, when Wilhelm Mayer used an increased rate of DP in the relatives of patients with paraphrenia diagnosed by Kraepelin to argue that paraphrenia was best considered a form of DP (Kendler, 2022; Mayer, 1921). Then, in a clearer replication of Wolfsohn's methods, 1933, Bruno Schulz found a substantially elevated risk for DP in the siblings of hebephrenic PD patients originally diagnosed by Kraepelin and previously studies by Rüdin (Kendler & Klee, 2022; Schulz, 1933).…”

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confidence: 99%

Ryssia Wolfsohn's 1907 dissertation on “the heredity of dementia praecox”

Kendler

Klee

2023

American J of Med Genetics Pt B

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In the 19th century, psychiatric genetic studies typically utilized a generic category of “insanity.” This began to change after 1899, with the publication of Kraepelin's 6th edition containing, among other disorders, his mature concept of dementia praecox (DP). We here review an article published by Ryssia Wolfsohn in 1907 from her dissertation at the University of Zurich entitled “Die Heredität bei Dementia praecox” (The Heredity of Dementia Praecox). This work, performed under the supervision of E. Bleuler, was to our knowledge the first formal genetic study of the then new diagnosis of DP. She investigated 550 DP probands admitted to the Burghölzli hospital with known information about their “heredity burden.” For most probands, she had information on parents, siblings, grandparents, and aunts/uncles. Of these patients, only 10% had no psychiatric illness in their families. In the remaining probands, she found rates of the four major categories of psychopathology she investigated: mental illness—56%, nervous disorders—19%, peculiar personalities 12% and alcoholism 13%. Her most novel analyses compared either total familial burden or burden of her four forms of mental disorders on her DP probands divided by subtype and outcome. In neither of these analyses, did she find significant differences.

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