Reference Delirium: What It Is, Symptoms, Causes And Treatment

A delusion by itself is any false and incorrigible belief that is not in line with the social and cultural origin of the subject. It is established by a pathological route and constitutes the main axis of the patient’s life, dominating his thoughts, but also his mood and behavior. According to K. Jaspers, delirium has 3 main characteristics:

• Extraordinary conviction.
• It does not influence experience or empirical evidence.
• Impossibility in its content (falsehood).

He reference delusion Specifically, also known as self-referential delusion, it is considered one that makes a incorrect interpretation of causal incidents and external events as referring directly to oneself to an intense degree. Without this degree of intensity, we would be talking about reference ideas. In other words, it is the false belief that the events, objects of other people’s behavior and other perceptions (generally of a negative nature) that the patient perceives are related to their person.

Delusions are generally a symptom of other mental disorders within the schizophrenia spectrum, or other disorders that may or may not be psychotic. In any case, this can develop a disorder in itself, the so-called delusional disorder.

The different types of delirium, including reference delirium, show common manifestations among them:

• Hallucinations related to delusional themes
• Absence of other psychotic symptoms
• Affective state in line with the delusional theme
• Absence of illness judgment
• Other areas of functioning affected depending on the content of the delirium
• No significant deterioration in psychosocial activity

In the specific case of the reference delirium, they would be those discussed above, taking into account that The delusional theme to which he will refer will be the erroneous personal attribution to the person himself

Like other types of delirium, its course is chronic: it goes from suspicion to delirious creation, and its consolidation into a delirium.

It is important to keep in mind that, in people with this alteration, any behavior will be integrated within the context of the delusional theme.

The prevalence of baseline delirium varies between 0.03 and 1%, with female predominance. Other things to keep in mind about delusions, and something that helps us differentiate it from other disorders on the psychotic spectrum, is its late appearance. Usually from 40 years old.

There is no clear cause, although we know that mental health illnesses are a result of interaction of genetics and environment with an average ratio of 60-40% in which the greater weight of the environment or genetics will depend on each specific case, without being able to make a clear determination.

It is true that even without being able to make a rigorous association, there are factors, considered risk, that could help us. These are the use of drugs and psychotic substances, history of previous delusional episodes, family history of psychotic disorders or other pathologies s like:

• Schizophrenia
• Schizophreniform disorder
• Schizoaffective disorder
• Delusional disorder (paranoia)
• Brief psychotic disorder
• Shared psychotic disorder (Folie à deux)
• Psychotic disorder due to medical illness
• Toxic-induced psychotic disorder
• Bipolar disorder
• unipolar depression
• Dementia

When delirium is a consequence of another medical disorder or illness, the primary treatment will be alleviate the main cause which has delirium as a symptom. For example, if a person suffers from delusions as a symptom of schizophrenia, the primary treatment will be that of schizophrenia.

First of all, we must keep in mind that delirium is difficult to treat, and It is usually treated with psychotropic drugs usually antipsychotics. Even so, it has been shown that one of the therapies that works best is cognitive-behavioral therapy, so if we want to treat reference delirium specifically and in isolation, the therapy for it will be based on cognitive restructuring and confrontation in order to increase the person’s capacity for rational judgment towards themselves and try to dismantle the construction they have made around the delusional idea.

Depending on the content, we can differentiate several types of delirium:

1. Prejudice or paranoid
2. Reference or self-reference
3. Control/Passivity/alienation (K. Schneider)
4. Jealousy or jealousy: Othello Syndrome
5. Erotomaniac: Cléreambault syndrome
6. Megalomaniac.
7. Mystical-religious.
8. Poverty and ruin.
9. Guilt and condemnation.
10. Hypochondriac or somatic.
11. Denial or nihilists (Cotard Syndrome)
12. Infestation (Ekbom Sd.)
13. False identifications (Capgras syndrome or Fregoli syndrome)

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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