Delusional misidentification syndrome

Delusional misidentification syndrome
SpecialtyPsychiatry

Delusional misidentification syndrome is an umbrella term, introduced by Christodoulou (in his book The Delusional Misidentification Syndromes, Karger, Basel, 1986) for a group of four delusional disorders that occur in the context of mental and neurological illness. They are grouped together as they often occur simultaneously or interchange, and they display the common concept of the double (sosie).[1] They all involve a belief that the identity of a person, object, or place has somehow changed or has been altered. Christodoulu further categorized these disorders into those including hypo (or under)-identification of a well-known person (Capgras delusion), and hyper (or over)-identification of an unknown person (the remaining three).[2] As these delusions typically only concern one particular topic, they also fall under the category called monothematic delusions.[3]

  1. ^ Christodoulou, George N.; Margariti, Maria; Kontaxakis, Vassilis P.; Christodoulou, Nikos G. (2009). "The delusional misidentification syndromes: strange, fascinating, and instructive". Current Psychiatry Reports. 11 (3): 185–189. doi:10.1007/s11920-009-0029-6. ISSN 1535-1645. PMID 19470279. S2CID 7255596.
  2. ^ Bate, Sarah (2017-09-09). Face Recognition and its Disorders. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-137-29277-3.
  3. ^ Blom, Jan Dirk (2009-12-08). A Dictionary of Hallucinations. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 332. ISBN 978-1-4419-1223-7.