INFORMACIONES PSIQUIÁTRICAS 246

12 Informaciones Psiquiátricas 2022 - n.º 246 knowledging that the grouping is more di- dactic than real. The symptoms tend to be a combination of volitional, cognitive and/or affective/emotional changes that render a particular behavioural presentation. Behavioural changes and organic personality disorder One of the successful terms in the study of neuropsychiatry of ABI is ‘(neuro)beha- vioural changes’ These changes can appear in the acute phase (post-traumatic amnesia or confusional states), accompany somatic or neurological complications (infections, hydrocephalus, epilepsy) or be part of a permanent change. Behavioural changes are loosely defined and they refer to the new appearance of behaviours that interfere with social functioning, or the absence of beha- viours that are normally expected in that person according to the previous personality described by close relatives or friends. ‘Per- sonality’ is a psychological construct that describes the permanent traits that underlie the patterns of emotional and behavioural reactions of an individual. When we describe permanent, repeated and signifit neurobeha- vioural changes in a patient with ABI, the diagnosis that follows is ‘organic personality disorder’ (OPD). The subtype of OPD depends on the most salient behavioural changes; DSM-5 includes labile, aggressive, apathetic, paranoid and disinhibited under the diag- nosis of ‘personality change due to another medical condition’. We have explored these behavioural chan- ges in three different PhD projects in Spain that are going to be used in the following paragraphs. Castaño 7 completed her PhD on the ‘Neuropsychiatry of Traumatic Brain In- jury’. The cross-sectional analysis of a chro- nic TBI sample is analyzed first 8 : 53 patients with severe TBI, between 2 and 8 years after trauma, young (mean age 35) and mainly male (85%). Only three patients were free of neuropsychiatric symptoms according to the NPI results; figure 1 summarizes the pre- valence of psychiatric symptoms when the neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) was used. The first result to highlight is the relati- ve absence of classical psychotic symptoms: none of the subjects presented hallucina- tions and only three had delusions. On the other hand 56% of the patients presented with irritability/lability, 49% with apathy and 43% with depression; desinhibition and changes in eating pattern were detected in 32% of the sample. José Ignacio Quemada