Brain tumors and space-occupying lesions can lead to psychiatric manifestations. The presence of psychiatric manifestations before the occurence of neurological symptoms may complicate the diagnostical process. Atypical psychiatric symptoms often mislead physicians to a misdiagnosis if organic assessments are not performed before a psychiatric diagnosis is made. For this reason, a comprehensive differential diagnosis assessment should be made during the initial evaluation including neurological, general medical and psychiatric conditions. Besides, our knowledge of the neuropsychiatric effects of space-occupying lesions in the brain is usually based on case reports. In this article, the relationship between the location of lesions and the atypicality of the psychiatric symptoms of patients with space-occupying brain lesions are discussed over two patients cases.
Key words: brain tumors, psychosis, psychiatry
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