Paraphrenia: types, symptoms and treatment of this disorder

The most serious mental disorders do not have to express themselves solely through hallucinations. Sometimes they do it by delusions, which are totally irrational beliefs resistant to 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. Next we will see what are the types, symptoms and treatments associated with this health problem.

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What is paraphrenia?

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

As it is a mental health problem, paraphrenia causes suffering to the person who suffers from it and/or to the people around them, but since it is chronic in nature, it does not have an immediate cure.

In addition, the delusions that appear in paraphrenia are very flowery, that is to say, there are many strongly irrational components in them, a great variety of recurring themes, relatively complex narratives about what reality is like, and these affect many facets of the life of the person. For example, a delusion appearing in paraphrenia may consist of a conspiracy of humanoid ants to control all water sources on the planet.

The word "paraphrenia" was proposed by the psychiatrist Karl Kahlbaum during the 19th century, and its meaning was developed by Emil Kraepelin few decades later. For this reason, it is currently considered an imprecise clinical category with little use in professional practice. As it is not very well defined compared 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.

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Symptoms

The symptoms associated with paraphrenia are the following.

1. Tendency to distrust

Patients whose behavior resembles the descriptions of Praphrenia often tend to distrust others in a very conspicuous way. Many times, this reaches the extreme of becoming a delusion of persecution; Ambiguous facts are perceived as signs that someone is after him.

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

2. erotic delusion

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

3. Delusions of greatness

The patient believes that he is someone important or with a lot of power, which is why he also makes sense of 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 delusions).

4. Solipsism and self-reference

Patients with symptoms associated with paraphrenia tend to believe that apparently little related events with themselves, in reality, they are, as if many things happened because of their existence or their proximity.

5. intelligence preserved

Unlike what happens in the dementias, people with mental problems linked to paraphrenia do not have a level of intelligence significantly low, and beyond his beliefs and delusions his way of thinking is functional.

6. hallucinations

Although they do not occur in all cases, they can sometimes appear, especially visual and auditory. These appearances reinforce the person's delusions.

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Types of paraphrenias

Paraphrenias can be classified as:

• fantastic paraphrenia: linked to strongly fanciful delusions, it ends in dementia after a few years.
• Expansive paraphrenia: associated with delusions of grandeur.
• confabulatory paraphrenia: characterized by a warp of memories and the invention of stories about the past.
• Systematic paraphrenia: it is based on a delusion of persecution that is intensifying.

Treatment

As it is a psychiatric disorder, medication with psychotropic drugs is common to treat psychoses such as paraphrenia. Specifically, commonly used substances are certain types of neuroleptics like thioridazine. It must be borne in mind that any drug has side effects.

On the other hand, since it is rare for patients to go to the consultation of their own free will, it is necessary to work in partnership therapist-patient so that the treatment is not abandoned, and it is also recommended to combine this pharmacological approach with cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy and relaxation techniques.

The goal of these interventions is not to definitively cure the disorder, in the sense of making the symptoms stop appearing. symptoms, but to make flare-ups less frequent and psychotic symptoms more manageable and generate less anxiety and discomfort.