Emily Chan
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.
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