Q. Could you please explain what an Organic Personality Disorder is, and what are its symptoms?

A. Organic Personality Disorder is an old term no longer used in psychiatry. It dates back a number of years, and includes dementia, delirium, psychosis not related to schizophrenia or mood disorders, brain injured patients, patients with diseases that effect behavior, Parkinsonism, etc. Basically, it was what we called folks that acted in a manner consistent with damage to the brain, but not fitting into standard depression, schizophrenia, or anxiety disorders.

The implication was that the disorders like depression or schizophrenia were not organic, which they are. We have since defined patients with delirium, dementia, head injury, viral diseases of the brain, Parkinsonism, etc as their own diseases. All of these use to be Organic Personality Disorders.