[Psychopathology of malaria. History and nosologic topics with reference to protean symptomatology]

The literature dealing with the psychiatric consequences of malaria is the result of the experience of physicians in former colonial countries and in both World Wars. The psychopathological categories employed in their descriptions, whether due to a lack of psychiatric expertise or the influence of the noncommittal Anglo-Saxon psychopathological nomenclature of that time, are of a wide and heterogeneous spectrum. A detailed critical comparison demonstrated that there are two fundamental forms of psychic disorders caused by malaria: 1) the pseudo-neurotic or pseudo-psychopathic alterations evidencing a varied phenomenological character, with no delimitation to the psychoses; on the contrary, with frequent transitions to them, and 2) the exogenous malaria-psychoses caused by the illness itself or occasionally resulting from a liver insufficiency or from one of many forms of cerebral involvement. The latter can terminate in either a lethal coma or a demential state. Furthermore, both endogenous psychoses apparently triggered by malaria and exogenous psychoses caused by anti-malaria drugs still exist.