[The place of acute psychotic disorders in current classification systems]

The current upheavals in psychiatric nosology preoccupy most psychiatric teams while many practitioners continue to be unaware of the proposed changes in the ICD10-DSM IV international classifications. Certain entities, considered firmly established, have been excluded from those classifications. This applies to hysteria and acute paranoid reactions, for example. Acute psychosis, consisting in two clinical entities specific to the French school, paranoid reactions and states of mental confusion, are frequently encountered by North-African psychiatrists. Those acute states, sufficiently differentiated and with a good prognosis, have been scattered in a multitude of disorders making any attempt at understanding and summarizing impossible. Should the current classifications be considered a regression or an opportunity of beginning the third millennium with components enabling enhanced prospects for psychiatric progress and research?