APA Dictionary of Psychology

dementia associated with advanced neurosyphilitic infection of the brain (see neurosyphilis), a condition that is now extremely rare because syphilis is usually diagnosed and treated in its early stages. The first symptoms of general paresis appear 5 to 30 years after the primary infection. Psychological signs are irritability, confusion, fatigue, and forgetfulness, followed by headaches, confabulation, and deterioration in behavior and judgment. If untreated with antibiotics, physical signs gradually develop, including Argyll Robertson pupils, sagging facial muscles, vacant expression, slurred speech, poor handwriting, and locomotor ataxia, followed by inability to dress, paralysis, convulsions, loss of bladder and bowel control, and gradual deterioration to a vegetative state. General paresis was formerly known as general paralysis of the insane, dementia paralytica, paralytic dementia, and paretic psychosis. Also called general paralysis.