What are some psychiatric conditions associated with disordered affect?
Affective lability may be one feature of some mood disorders (e.g., bipolar disorders) and personality disorders (e.g., borderline personality disorder), but these disorders should not be diagnosed on the basis of this feature alone .
Pathologic laughing and crying (also called pseudobulbar affect ) can result from disruption of afferents (especially brain stem [i.e., bulbar] serotonergic afferents) to paralimbic regions by various disorders including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease, and others.
Witzelsucht (pathologic punning) is associated with frontal lobe injury. Ictal laughing (gelastic epilepsy) or crying (dacrystic or quiritarian epilepsy) are associated with complex partial seizures.
