DYSTHYMIA. - Abnormal variation of the affective life of psychopathic individuals, oscillating between manic exaltation (v. MANIA) and melancholic depression (v. MELANCHOLIA) not motivated by external circumstances (endogenous causes). Dysthymias constitute in particular the building blocks of manic-depressive psychosis. On the other hand, distinct pictures may occur in the course of the most varied nervous and mental illnesses, in which the variations of the individual's mood represent one of the symptoms or transient episodes and are not specific to the illness.
Thus in epilepsy, with a tendency to irritability, to gloomy, sad, pessimistic, anxious, enduring forms, the patient assuming a suspicious and violent demeanor; in progressive paralytic dementia, with manic exaltation, euphoria, psychomotor excitability; in senile and climacteric dementia (v. CLIMATERICA ETÀ), with a tendency to melancholic depressive forms; in chronic alcoholism (v.); in precocious dementia or schizophrenia (v.); in hysteria. For some dysthymic forms, doubt may remain as to how much belongs to external causes of family and social environment or to endogenous constitutional causes; often we discern in individuals an almost serial variability between the cycloid temperament (v. INDOLE), with an easily unstable, poorly motivated mood, and the true and proper forms of dysthymia, to be classified among the morbid pathological pictures.
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Giuseppe de Ninno