Talk:Delirium
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[edit] Merge with Mental confusion
Lee: In addition to the changes you recommend, I also would like the Wikipedia community to consider adding a new category to the general topic of confusion. The new category would be labeled something like "confusion in everyday life," and I would submit an article for the community to review and include if it appears appropriate. I don’t know whether it would fit best as an amplification of the pathological concept of confusion, or as a separate article with cross-links.
I'm a retired psychiatrist with a long interest in the confusion that ordinary people experience when confronted with a dilemma, or when coping with disinformation and other confusion-inducing manipulations of corporations, government employees, presidents, spin doctors, etc. Most people have a lot of trouble tolerating this type of confusion, and try to resolve it using various coping methods. Problem is, many of those coping methods worsen the overall confusion, creating a vicious cycle in which sources and coping attempts amplify each other.
I've written two books on the topic, American Confusion from Vietnam to Kosovo: Coping with Chaos in High Places, and Lethal American Confusion: How Bush and the Pacifists Each Failed in the War on Terrorism. (That one is only an e-book at the moment, but a print copy ought to be out in August. Info’s available at www.AmericanConfusion.com ) One result of this broadening of the topic is a forecasting model using cognitive maps, which predicted more of the adverse outcomes of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars than did the Bush administration.
Thanks for raising this question, Lee. Bill Taylor (William R. Taylor, M.D.) wrbftaylor@comcast.net
Have added to merge list:
Merge Mental confusion into Delirium since the current Mental confusion article mostly describes specifically delirium rather than confusion in general. Create a new article Confusion (clinical) discussing the clinical sign of confusion and the differentiation between its acute cause (Delirium) and its chronic cause (Dementia).
Although 'mental confusion' itself is not synonymous with delirium, the actual current text of the Mental confusion article (symptoms and causes) is actually refering to delirium. There's quite a bit of cleaning up that's needed in all three articles (i.e. this one, Mental confusion and Dementia) but I think the best way to start is to merge most of Mental confusion into here.
As I said above, I then plan to create a new article Confusion (clinical) that discusses the clinical picture of confusion with links to delirium and dementia without duplicating what's in those two articles. I think that would make a lot of sense both for students/clinicians using this as a quick reference and for lay people seeking to understand what they've seen or been told by a heathcare professional.
BTW - I am a junior doctor, but I'm not very experienced with Wikipedia. I hope a merge request is the right way to do this but if someone can correct me or reassure me I'd be grateful! I've used wikipedia a bit revising for exams (with caution!) and come across some very good and very poor information, so I'm doing my bit to clean a few things up and may do a lot more in future.
--Lee Collier 07:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi there,
I've replaced the original initial sentence of this entry.
In the case of this entry the construction "In medicine, delirium is a mental state for which are several definitions exist" (sic) is (grammer aside) an incoherent definition.
Since there are several definitions, the word 'delirium' must be a term. Suggesting that 'delerium is a mental state' is fine in everyday language but in an encyclopedia it is important to describe the fact that it may be used in many different ways and that there are competing theories as to what it is actually refers to.
-- Vaughan
Hmm, as for the disambiguation blurb at the top, I was trying to look up a band called 'Delirium' the other day, and uncovered two punk bands of that name (one from Germany, one from Australia), a band from the Delaware, USA area formed in 1986, and an Italian (?) group that started releasing music in 1971. So, maybe further remarks are needed? Even if some/all of the other Deliriums aren't significant enough to have Wikipedia entries, it might still be helpful to list them... not sure.
os 02:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Clearly no reason to merge this with confusion
Confusion and loss of focus are the common-denominator symptoms of ALL brain structural and metabolic disorders that affect thinking. These symptoms may be reversible or permanent, acute or chronic, acquired or congenital, "organic" or without obvious evidence of organic origin (ie, "psychiatric"). When confusion and lack of ability to focus happen acutely in medicine, we call it "delirium." Long term problems are divided into learning disabilities and AD(H)D in younger patients, and various sorts of organic brain syndromes and dementias when acquired at later stages in life. But confusion and delirium, while greatly overlapping, are not the same. There are chronically confused patients who aren't technically delirious (for example: stable demented people). And some delirious people who aren't confused (example: the suddenly-ill person who cannot think or focus, but is perfectly well-oriented and conversant). Go without sleep for 36 or 48 hours and you'll find yourself medically delirius, even if you're not confused. The same goes for somebody who is in great pain, either physical or emotional. SBHarris 02:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Disambiguation
I think there should be a Delirium (disambiguation) page. There's a whole bunch of links at the top of the current page that link to other deliria of various sorts. (And sooner or later, someone will create a page for the album — here — by Capercaillie.) Anyone disagree? — AnnaKucsma (Talk to me!) 15:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
- Done! — AnnaKucsma (Talk to me!) 16:28, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Audrey: Our class is doing a research project and we were wondering who first discovered delirium?
[edit] Another cause for delirium?
Last night my mother and I fell sick from what was believed to be food poisoning due to bacterial toxins from the cupcakes that I had made earlier that evening. When I left my bed to go get a cold cloth to put on my forehead, I turned on the light of the bathroom, but I was very confused because the light didn't seem to be on (even though it actually was). I left the room, unconciously leaving the water on and the cloth behind. I stumbled back, and turned the water off, now just leaving the cloth behind. I finally went back to bed and told my mom to go get it, since my attempts were clearly in vain. But the strange thing happened when I was walking over to the side of the bed that I slept on. I looked towards the corner of the room and there were these triangular-like figures (like an image depicting the center of an equilateral triangle and the vertices connected from one line that is branching out from the middle, remove the perimeter of the triangle and there it is) of a bluish-purple color all clustered together. I do not know what this is, and I was hoping that one of you guys could help? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CorpseJester (talk • contribs) 15:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Merger proposal
How do we feel about a merge as OBS is delirium by another name...Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
- No! They aren't the same. Both are organic syndromes (caused by physical factors not mental illness without known physical cause), but OBS is the more general and inclusive term. OBS includes not only recent and secondarily-caused organic syndomes like delirium, but also all the other permanent and long-term primary physical causes of mental dysfunction, such as trauma, all of the various dementing brain diseases (Alzheimer's disease, etc), dementing stroke, and so on. In short, anything that causes new cognitive dysfunction that is NOT mental illness, is OBS. But delirium, by definition, must be a sort of OBS which is both new and of recent onsent, and is therefore often temporary, and often caused by something that is (in theory) reversible. Delirium is a subset of OBS, but it is generally used very specifically to indicate a different prognosis and approach, so that in practice the two are rarely used interchangably. Even though some patients could (by strict definition) be said to have both syndromes. Perhaps a Venn diagram is needed :) SBHarris 06:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
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- Yeah, I 'spose. In Oz we do occasionally talk about chronic delirium but it is pretty rare, it'd then be some form of dementia really, or if some post-traumatic injury it might be a frontal lobe-type syndrome. Hmmm. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
- "Chronic delirium" is a bad term-- technically an oxymoron. It should never be used. When any congitive dysfunction becomes chronic, it's something else and not delirium. Dementias aren't deliriums, though demented people can become temporarily delirious on top of their dementia, and often do (when infected, ill in other ways, etc, etc). SBHarris 06:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, I 'spose. In Oz we do occasionally talk about chronic delirium but it is pretty rare, it'd then be some form of dementia really, or if some post-traumatic injury it might be a frontal lobe-type syndrome. Hmmm. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm an MD - organic brain syndrome is most definitely NOT delirium at all. Should not be merged, and furthermore I think this article has major errors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.83.138.14 (talk) 18:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
