People with Cotard ’s Delusion believe they ’re on the wrongside of The Walking Dead TV serial publication , meaning they think they ’re in reality dead . How is it possible to treat them ? Can you “ prove ” to a patient role that they ’re still animated ?
In 1880 , Doctor Jules Cotard had the first of a series ofwhat I can think were very thwarting conversations with patients in hiscare . His primary patient role was Madame X , whoat first believe that certain function of her body did n’t survive and did n’t believe that sheneeded to rust . She said that her soulwas already stolen by the devil , that she was therefore already dead andcouldn’t die . She die of starvation . Over the ensuing century and a half manypeople have been diagnosed with Cotard ’s hallucination . Their delusions cover many angles of asimilar theme ; they believe thatparts of them are dead , rotting , or missing , or they only believe that they , as dead multitude , can not be killed .
One 53 - year - honest-to-goodness Filipino woman was admitted to a psychiatrichospital , resisting all the agency because she tell doctors that she could smellher flesh rotting and she should be taken to the morgue . A serviceman in Iran kept insisting that he wasdead , that he was also a werewolf , and that his children had twist intosheep . Two different Chinese womenbelieved that their gut – meat , liver , or belly – had been taken out andthat their interior were just take with water.(This is a common delusion , though most people only cerebrate that their internal organs are decompose , not entirelyremoved . )
The more famous , and classic , cases of Cotard ’s Delusion arerare . One 46 - year - old man believedthat his soundbox had been plow indifferent , and he was now a ghost . He stopped eating , since he no longer neededto wipe out to dwell , and lose 30 pounds in two months . He was admitted to the infirmary in fiat tokeep him from famish to death . Anotherman was admitted after a motor cycle accident left him convinced he was dead , and a trip to South Africa with his female parent leave him convinced that he had goneto hell ( because of the heating plant , not the female parent ) . Hebelieved his sleeping female parent ’s spirit was consecrate him a tour of hell .
Cotard ’s Delusion seems to be an facial expression of largermental unwellness . Most Cotard ’s patientsare either schizophrenic , severely depressed , or bipolar . Madame X had themisfortune to have the syndrome when psychiatry was in its infancy ( if not itsactual gestation ) , but today Cotard ’s sick person have a better prospect . Sadly , this is an area where spill the beans seldom does anything to help ; people can not be convinced that they ’re still alive . One the plus side , since they ’re utter , they rarely revere any risks of treatment . neuroleptic do a pile of good , as do antidepressant drug . ( Most walking corpses are n’t that pollyannaish . )
Fittingly , electrical energy seems to be a very good way of fetch people back from the dead . One woman , who believed she was a corpse for seven years , stated that she was alive again after the second round of electroconvulsive therapy . Another man , who had lesions on his brain and who claimed that his abdomen had disappear , felt no change after getting medicine , but responded to electroconvulsive therapy . Shock intervention is n’t the brutal thing we see in old motion-picture show . Patients are anesthetized , given brief shocks , and then woken up again . Cotard ’s patient often feel better after only a few treatments , and start socializing , taking care of themselves , and in general admitting that they ’re alive .
( I do n’t recognise whether , after the therapy , the medico habituate the fact that patients are unconscious to scream “ It ’s alive ! It ’s aliiiiiiive ! ” I just have sex I would . )
[ ViaJFS , NCBI , Hub Pages , SMJ ]
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