The most serious mental disorders do not have to be expressed only through hallucinations. Sometimes, they do so through delusions, which are totally irrational beliefs resistant to the physical evidence that contradicts them.

This type of phenomenon is precisely what occurs in a mental disorder known as paraphrenia , which is something like a chronically maintained delusion. Below we will see the types, symptoms and treatments associated with this health problem.

What is paraphrenia?

The term “paraphrenia” refers to a chronic psychosis , that is, a break with reality that leads to very bizarre and unreasonable ways of understanding things. Furthermore, what characterizes paraphrenia is not hallucinations but delusions , although the former may also occur in some cases.

As a mental health problem, paraphrenia causes suffering to the person who suffers from it and/or to the people around them, but being chronic in nature it has no immediate cure.

In addition, the delusions that appear in paraphrenia are very flowery, that is, they have many strongly irrational components, a wide variety of recurrent themes, relatively complex narratives about what reality is like, and these affect many facets of the person’s life. For example, a delusion that appears in paraphrenia may consist of a conspiracy of humanoid ants to control every water source on the planet.

The word “paraphrenia” was proposed by psychiatrist Karl Kahlbaum during the 19th century, and its meaning was developed by Emil Kraepelin a few decades later. For this reason, it is currently considered a vague clinical category with little usefulness in professional practice. As it is not very well defined in comparison to other psychiatric entities, it does not appear in the ICD-10 or DSM-5 diagnostic manuals, but despite this it is still common today.

Symptoms

The symptoms associated with paraphrenia are as follows.

1. Tendency to distrust

Patients whose behavior resembles descriptions of prafrenia often tend to distrust others in a very conspicuous way. This often goes to the extreme of becoming a delusion of persecution; ambiguous facts are perceived as signs that someone is following in their footsteps.

In practice, this symptom has led to the concept of prafrenia being linked to paranoid schizophrenia.

2. Erotic delirium

People with paraphrenia often believe they can arouse the erotic passions of others, which gives them an excuse to feel persecuted.

3. Delirium of grandeur

The patient believes that he is someone important or very powerful, so he also finds meaning in the fact that many entities are interested in him and want to influence his life (or put it in danger, as is usual in this type of delirium).

4. Solipsism and self-reference

Patients with a condition that can be associated with paraphrenia tend to believe that seemingly unrelated facts are in fact unrelated, as if many things happen because of their existence or proximity.

5. Preserved intelligence

Unlike in dementia, people with mental problems linked to paraphrenia do not have a significantly low level of intelligence, and beyond their beliefs and delusions their thinking is functional.

6. Hallucinations

Although they do not occur in all cases, sometimes they can appear, especially visual and auditory ones. These appearances reinforce the person’s delusional ideas.

Types of paraphrenias

Paraphrenias can be classified as:

  • Fantastic paraphrenia : linked to strongly fantastical delusions, it ends in dementia after a few years.
  • Expansive paraphrenia: associated with delusions of grandeur
  • Confabulatory paraphrenia: characterized by a deformation of memories and the invention of stories about the past,
  • Systematic paraphrenia: it is based on a delirium of persecution that is intensifying.

Treatment

As a psychiatric disorder, medication with psychopharmaceuticals is common to treat psychoses such as paraphrenia. In particular, commonly used substances are certain types of neuroleptics such as thioridazine. It should be noted that any drug has side effects.

On the other hand, as it is rare for patients to come to the clinic of their own free will, it is necessary to work on the therapist-patient alliance so that treatment is not abandoned, and it is also recommended to combine this pharmacological approach with cognitive-condevelopmental psychotherapy and relaxation techniques.

The aim of these interventions is not to cure the disorder definitively, in the sense of making the symptoms stop, but to make the outbreaks less frequent and the psychotic symptoms more controllable and generate less anxiety and discomfort.