RT Book, Section A1 Ropper, Allan H. A1 Samuels, Martin A. A1 Klein, Joshua P. A1 Prasad, Sashank SR Print(0) ID 1199444006 T1 Fatigue, Asthenia, Anxiety, and Depression T2 Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology, 12e YR 2023 FD 2023 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9781264264520 LK neurology.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1199444006 RD 2024/10/10 AB In this chapter, we consider the clinically related phenomena of fatigue, nervousness, irritability, anxiety, and depression. These complaints form the core of a group of symptom-based disorders with normal neurologic findings that are ubiquitous in medical practice. Although more abstruse than paralysis, sensory loss, seizures, or aphasia, they are no less important, if for no other reason than their frequency. In an audit of a large neurologic practice, anxiety and depressive reactions were the main diagnosis in 20 percent of patients, second only to headache (Digon et al). The prevalence of fatigue was 25 percent in a survey of patients in general practices in Ireland (Cullen et al). Similarly, in primary care clinics in Boston and Houston, fatigue was the prominent complaint over 20 percent of patients. Some of these symptoms represent only slight aberrations of function or heightened normal reactions to environmental stress or to diseases; others are integral features of the diseases themselves; and still others represent disturbances of neuropsychiatric function that are components of the diseases described in Chaps. 47 through 49 on psychiatric diseases as viewed through the perspective of neurology.