CADASIL (Cerebral Autosomal-Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy), the most common form of hereditary stroke disorder, is characterized by headaches, transient ischemic attacks and psychiatric symptoms which include mood changes, behaviour disorders and variable levels of dementia.

To emphasize the necessity of discarding somatic and neurological processes before a psychiatric diagnosis is reached.

We present a case initially followed in psychiatry and derived to neurology, and compare it with articles no older than ten years, found in a bibliographic search in Medline (PubMed), fitting the next keywords: CADASIL, autosomal dominant encephalopathy, psychiatric symptoms.

The most frequent manifestation of CADASIL is the early age onset of cerebrovascular ischemic attacks, nonetheless, a fair percentage of patients debut with insidious psychiatric symptoms, especially mood changes, behavioural disorders and even mutism. Independently of the age of onset, these symptoms are present at some point of the illness in most cases.

Psychiatric symptoms can be found in a vast number of somatic and neurological disorders, even being the first manifestation of such processes. This challenges diagnosis, and given than the line between brain and mind is blurred and not always clear, cooperation among different specialities is of utmost importance in order to correctly treat the illness as a whole, and not just the sum of the parts.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.