Cotard’s delusion is a rare mental disorder in which the person has a delusional belief he is dead, not exists, lost their blood and/or internal organs or is putrefying.
The disorder, not known in nowadays Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, was first described by Jules Cotard. Jules Cotard is a neurologist who lived between 1840-1889. He described the delusion form a mild case like despair and self-louting until a severe case, characterized by extreme delusions. Depression is mostly comorbid to Cotards Delusion. People with this delusion mostly live isolated and neglect personal hygiene.
Case of Mademoisselle X
This lady denied the existence of parts of her body and the need to eat. She said she was >condemned to eternal damnation. She told people that she could not die a normal death. In the end >she died of starvation.
Symptoms
It’s not that the people who suffer from Cotards Delusion don’t see the world different. There is something wrong with their interpretations.
Cotard described three stages
-Germination stage: symptoms of hypochondria and psychotic depression appear.
-Blooming stage: development of the syndrome and the negation and delusions.
-Chronic stage: severe delusions become chronic together with the chronic psychiatric depression.
Background
Cotard’s syndrome is categorized in the new DSM and described underneath ‘somatic delusions, those that involve bodily functions or sensation’. The syndrome is usually encountered in people with schizophrenia, mental illness, depression and de-realization. Research describes lesions in the parietal lobe associated with Cotard delusion.
Treatment
Recent research (2010) reports successful pharmacological treatments by using antipsychotic, antidepressant and mood stabilizing drugs.
Why I wrote about this particular subject
While watching the series Hannibal, there was an episode off a woman laying underneath a bed, thinking she was dead. [Link to Hannibal, the serie, woman under the bed]( . I decided to find out off a disorder like this really existed, and it did.