Symptoms Caused by Medical & Neurological Illness
Many medical and neurological conditions can directly contribute to psychiatric symptoms. This includes post-stroke depression, mood or cognitive changes related to autoimmune or autoinflammatory diseases (such as lupus), chronic infections (such as HIV or herpes viruses), epilepsy, and rheumatologic conditions. Symptoms may include depression, anxiety, psychosis, cognitive slowing, or emotional instability and are often mistaken for primary psychiatric disorders.
Did you know?
MTraditional psychiatric diagnosis focuses on symptoms, but neuroscience shows that medical illnesses can alter brain network function through inflammation, immune activation, vascular injury, or abnormal electrical activity. For example:
Stroke can disrupt specific networks depending on location, often affecting the Default Mode or Frontoparietal Control Networks
Autoimmune and inflammatory diseases can interfere with connectivity between emotional and cognitive networks, including the Salience Network
Chronic infections can cause widespread network inefficiency affecting attention, mood, and memory
Epilepsy involves abnormal electrical signaling that can destabilize communication between multiple networks, even between seizures
Different patterns of network involvement explain why psychiatric symptoms vary widely across individuals with similar medical diagnoses.
So what does this mean?
In complex or unclear cases, specialized brain imaging may help clarify how brain networks are functioning and guide more individualized care.