Emil Kraepelin was a German psychiatrist who produced many works on mental illnesses in the later half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. His groundwork in separating mental illnesses into different categories paved the way for a better understanding of the human mind and further classification of the various mental disorders that can afflict humans. He worked as a teacher of psychiatry in several universities and also treated psychiatric patients in hospitals in Germany.
Though it was Arnold Pick and not Emil Kraepelin who coined the words dementia praecox to describe the nature of degenerative psychotic disease, but it was the latter who made the term popular. Kraepelin took a diametrically opposite view of psychiatry from Freud and throughout the twentieth century, medical researches looking into mental illnesses swayed from one end to the other.
Kraepelin theorised that the psychoses were naturally occurring and could be divided into two categories - manic depressive psychosis (today known as bipolar disorder) and dementia praecox, the former being a mood disorder and the latter, disordered intellectual functioning. Known as the Kraepelinian dichotomy, this theory has had a very significant impact in further research on schizophrenia and other psychotic problems. He also categorised it as an incurable illness, the onset of which guaranteed descent into complete madness.
Kraepelin stuck to the claim for a long time that dementia praecox was a progressive disorder from which there was no return. However, later in his life, he backed down and accepted that it is possible for people to recover from the illness. In the eighth edition of his book, Psychiatrie, he acknowledges that around twenty six percent of his patients experienced at least partial recovery and remission of symptoms.
Kraepelin was one of the first persons to recognise a form of debilitating mental illness as hereditary. He successfully positioned the illness as being a product of family history rather than being caused by the environment or life-changing events. He used patient data from a wide range of countries to arrive at this conclusion. According to him, dementia praecox was caused by poisoning of the brain, most probably caused by sex hormones. Though this has been refuted today, his theories about the nature of the disease was a milestone in the research on this field.
Dementia praecox was relabelled as schizophrenia in the 1920s and further research done on this subject. While a few theories of Emil Kraepelin has been disproved, some of his work still stands. Currently, schizophrenia is classified as a genetic and biological illness rather than a mood or anxiety disorder. However, unlike Kraepelin, modern researchers accept that schizophrenia can be treated in most cases quite successfully. Research is still ongoing on this subject and no doubt we will see further developments proving or disproving the original theories of Kraepelin.