Abstract
In the wake of a cerebral lesion, patients may develop a syndrome in which they remain unaware of illness or deny that illness has occurred. Such unawareness or denial is considered to be a true expression of the underlying cerebral lesion and is called anosognosia (Hecaen & Albert, 1978). Neurologically, when speaking of denial of illness, the reference is, for the most part, to denial of hemiplegia, most often a hemiplegia of the left side of the body. The neurobehavioral manifestations of denial are varied and often bizarre. They range from a complete denial and negation of illness, to an indifference or unconcern for the neurological deficit. Some patients will neglect or fail to attend to stimuli emanating from the affected side of the body or even from the extracorporeal space associated with the affected side. Alternatively, a patient may express the opinion that one side of the body is alien to him or her, has disappeared, or actually belongs to a different person. (Hecaen & Albert, 1978; Heilman, Valenstein & Watson, 1984).
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© 1989 Plenum Press, New York
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Shalev, R.S. (1989). Anosognosia. In: Edelstein, E.L., Nathanson, D.L., Stone, A.M. (eds) Denial. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0737-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0737-2_8
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