Memory impairment: Memory impairment is linked to inattention, especially reduced formation of new long-term memory where higher degrees of attention is more necessary than for short-term memory. Since older memories are retained without need of concentration, previously formed long-term memories (i.e. those formed before the onset of delirium) are usually preserved in all but the most severe cases of delirium. Disorientation: As another symptom of confusion, and usually a more severe one, this describes the loss of awareness of the surroundings, environment and context in which the person exists. One may be disoriented to time, place, or self. Disorganized thinking: Disorganized thinking is usually noticed with speech that makes limited sense with apparent irrelevancies, and can involve poverty of speech, loose associations, perseveration, tangentiality, and other signs of a formal thought disorder. Language disturbances: Anomic aphasia, paraphasia, impaired comprehension, agraphia, and word-finding difficulties all involve impairment of linguistic information processing. Sleep changes: Sleep disturbances in delirium reflect disturbed circadian rhythm regulation, typically involving fragmented sleep or even sleep-wake cycle reversal (i.e. active at night, sleeping during the day) and often preceding the onset of a delirium episode
Psychotic symptoms: Symptoms of psychosis include suspiciousness, overvalued ideation and frank delusions. Delusions are typically poorly formed and less stereotyped than in schizophrenia or Alzheimers disease. They usually relate to persecutory themes of impending danger or threat in the immediate environment (e.g. being poisoned by nurses). Mood lability: Distortions to perceived or communicated emotional states as well as fluctuating emotional states can manifest in a delirious person (e.g.
Delirium (also known as acute confusional state) is an organically caused decline from a previous baseline of mental function that develops over a short period of time, typically hours to days. Delirium is a syndrome encompassing disturbances in attention, consciousness, and cognition. It may also involve other neurological deficits, such as psychomotor disturbances (e.g. hyperactive, hypoactive, or mixed), impaired sleep-wake cycle, emotional disturbances, and perceptual disturbances (e.g. hallucinations and delusions), although these features are not required for diagnosis. Delirium is caused by an acute organic process, which is a physically identifiable structural, functional, or chemical problem in the brain that may arise from a disease process outside the brain that nonetheless affects the brain. It may result from an underlying disease process (e.g. infection, hypoxia), side effect of a medication, withdrawal from drugs, over-consumption of alcohol, usage of hallucinogenic deliriants, or from any number of factors affecting ones overall health (e.g. malnutrition, pain, etc.). In contrast, fluctuations in mental status/function due to changes in primarily psychiatric processes or diseases (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar disorder) do not, by definition, meet the criteria for delirium.Delirium may be difficult to diagnose without the proper establishment of a persons usual mental function. Without careful assessment and history, delirium can easily be confused with a number of psychiatric disorders or chronic organic brain syndromes because of many overlapping signs and symptoms in common with dementia, depression, psychosis, etc. Delirium may manifest from a baseline of existing mental illness, baseline intellectual disability, or dementia, without being due to any of these problems.