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Perseverance occurs when the patient repeats a word, sentence or movement for a long time. The existence of perseveration can be said, for example, in a person who answers the completely different questions with one and the same sentence. Perseverance itself is not a disease, it occurs in the course of various mental disorders, but not only. Discovering the causes of perseveration is important because it is precisely their treatment that can lead to the end of perseveration.

Perseverationis a term derived from the Latin word "perseveratio" which can be translated as "insisting on something". According to this explanation, it could be assumed that perseveration is experienced especially by stubborn people, who usually insist on their opinions. In fact, however, perseveration is something completely different - patients experiencing perseveration - aimlessly and involuntarily - repeat different activities. These can be eithermotor perseverations , where patients repeat a certain movement over and over again, orverbal perseveration , during which people with these disorders repeat the same repeated involuntary , one word, a fragment of a sentence or even entire sentences.

If our loved one keeps repeating one sentence (e.g. the grandmother we talk to, the answer to each question is "summer is ending, winter is coming"), then most likely we can actually deal with a deviation in the form of perseveration. However, this phenomenon is also found in people who do not show any deviations from the normal mental state. In such cases, perseveration may appear, for example, in states of considerable exhaustion - it happens, after all, that we talk to someone after a hard day's work and even though another thread is raised in the conversation, we will not register it and repeat what we have already said. Stress is stress, however, what is really behind perseveration in people?

What are the reasons for perseveration?

The exact reasons for perseveration have not been discovered so far - but various mental disorders in the course of which perseveration may appear have been better defined. Hypotheses about the pathomechanism involved inthe occurrence of perseveration, there are at least a few. The most popular of them concern the fact that the involuntary and pointless repetition of various activities occurs when the patient's mind is not able to adjust its activity quickly enough to changing goals and tasks. Another, also functioning theory is that where the cause of perseveration is the phenomenon of "blocking" memory - in such a phenomenon, the patient would not be able to forget the previous activity, question or issue, and that is why he would have to repeat them instead of going to further operation.

Analyzing the above, it is quite clear that there is still a long way to know the exact mechanism of perseveration in science. It is noticeable, however, which diseases and mental disorders are most often associated with perseveration - typically they can be observed in patients suffering from:

  • schizophrenia;
  • autism and autism spectrum disorders (perseveration is especially common in people with Asperger's syndrome);
  • ADHD;
  • dementia disorders (e.g. for Alzheimer's disease);
  • intellectual disability (interestingly, in the opposite situation - i.e. in people with exceptionally high intelligence - perseveration may also occur).

Perseverance occurs not only in the course of various psychiatric units - they can also appear in people who experience some severe brain trauma. The risk of perseveration is especially high when the frontal lobes of the brain are damaged.

Perseverations: what do you have to differentiate them with?

Pointless, constant repetition of the same activities should be differentiated primarily from behaviors from the spectrum of obsessions and compulsions. These can be observed, for example, in the course of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), where patients can, for example, repeatedly (even being almost sure that they did) check whether they have closed the door from the house or check their purse every few moments to make sure. make sure they have their documents with them. Movement perseverations must also be distinguished from trichotillomania, in which patients also repeat one activity constantly, which is pulling their own hair.

What distinguishes both of these problems from perseveration is that in their course various additional disorders appear, but also that they have completely different causes than perseveration - obsessive-compulsive disorder is, after all, classified as a neurotic disorder, trichotillomania is in turn, a problem belonging to the group of control disorderspulses.

Yet another phenomenon with which perseveration needs to be differentiated is echolalia. In the course of echolalia, patients repeat words and sentences, also involuntarily and pointlessly, but in this case they repeat statements that they heard in their environment.

Important

Perseveration treatment

It is difficult to talk about perseverance as a disease entity - they are basically one of the symptoms of some other disease that occurs in a given patient. For this reason, there are no methods of treatment that are appropriate to perseveration. However, the person that led to perseveration may undergo therapy - patients can be treated with, for example, appropriate methods of treating schizophrenia or specific therapy for autism. Along with the general improvement of the patients' condition, perseveration - similarly to other symptoms of illnesses existing in patients - may decrease in severity, and even completely disappear.

About the authorBow. Tomasz NęckiA graduate of the medical faculty at the Medical University of Poznań. An admirer of the Polish sea (most willingly strolling along its shores with headphones in his ears), cats and books. In working with patients, he focuses on always listening to them and spending as much time as they need.

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Category:

Psychiatry