[1][2][3] This disorder is also distinguished from schizophrenia by a lower hereditary occurrence, less premorbid maladjustment, and a slower rate of progression.
[1][7] The paranoia and hallucinations can combine in the form of “threatening or accusatory voices coming from neighbouring houses [and] are frequently reported by the patients as disturbing and undeserved".
[8] Many patients who present with paraphrenia have significant auditory or visual loss, are socially isolated, do not have a permanent home, are unmarried and without children, and have maladaptive personality traits.
While the diagnosis of paraphrenia is absent from recent revisions of the DSM and the ICD, many studies have recognized the condition as "a viable diagnostic entity that is distinct from schizophrenia, with organic factors playing a role in a significant portion of patients.
Research suggests that paraphrenics respond well to antipsychotic drug therapy if doctors can successfully achieve sufficient compliance.
[1][2][4][11] Recovery from the psychotic symptoms seems to be rare, and in most cases paraphrenia results in in-patient status for the remainder of the life of the patient.
[1][2][9] Patients experience a slow deterioration of cognitive functions and the disorder can lead to dementia in some cases, but this development is no greater than the normal population.
[4][12][13] The term was also used by Sigmund Freud for a short time starting in 1911 as an alternative to the terms schizophrenia and dementia praecox, which in his estimation did not correctly identify the underlying condition,[14][15][16] and by Emil Kraepelin in 1912/3,[17][18] who changed its meaning to describe paraphrenia as it is understood today, as a small group of individuals that have many of the symptoms of schizophrenia with a lack of deterioration and thought disorder.
They characterized patients as having "paraphrenic delusions which… occurred in each case in the setting of a well-preserved intellect and personality, were often ‘primary’ in character, and were usually associated with the passivity failings or other volitional disturbances and hallucinations in clear consciousness pathognomonic of schizophrenia".
[4] Current studies, however, recognize the condition as "a viable diagnostic entity that is distinct from schizophrenia, with organic factors playing a role in a significant portion of patients.