This Extremely Rare Mental Illness Leaves You Feeling Like You’re Dead
In 1880, a French neurologist and psychiatrist named Jules Cotard described a phenomenon in which a person believes they are dead, dying, or do not exist.
The condition is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder known as Cotard’s delusion or walking corpse syndrome.
Cotard’s delusion usually appears alongside severe depression, other mental illnesses, and neurological conditions.
One of the main symptoms is nihilism. People with the condition experience an altered reality and beliefs about their existence.
They believe that nothing really exists or has any meaning, which can lead to extreme apathy, self-neglect, and feelings of detachment from the world.
Some individuals will stop taking care of themselves, bathing, eating, and drinking because they believe their bodies don’t need it since they’re already dead.
This can lead to malnutrition and starvation. They also might claim that their internal organs are rotting away and they don’t have a physical body.
Additionally, patients with Cotard’s syndrome have been said to experience hallucinations. A study conducted in 2018 focused on 12 individuals who had been diagnosed with the disorder.
Eight of them believed they had died, while the other four thought they were in the process of dying. Three out of the four were convinced that bugs, worms, or viruses were crawling around inside them, feasting on their organs.
WeeKwong – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
For instance, a 44-year-old man diagnosed with Cotard’s hallucinated spiders in the walls, rats running along the wall, and people’s faces melting off.
A 35-year-old woman with Cotard’s reported that worms were in her brain and that it was rotting. The patients could not be reasoned with, as they were positive what they were seeing was real.
It is unclear what causes Cotard’s delusion, but there are several factors that seem to contribute to the condition.
Cotard’s delusion could be a rare symptom of schizophrenia. In the 2018 study, two out of 12 patients had schizophrenia. Furthermore, people under the age of 25 with Cotard’s tend to have bipolar depression.
Seizures, strokes, cluster headaches, brain lesions, and loss of brain volume have also been found in individuals with Cotard’s. The average age of people with Cotard’s is about 50, and women seem more likely to develop the disorder.
Cotard’s delusion can be treated with a combination of psychotherapy and medications. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has proven to be effective in some patients.
It works by passing small electrical currents through the brain. Other treatment options include antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers.
The disease is not classified under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).
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