REFERENCE DELUSION: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatment

Surely many times you have heard the expression: "you are delirious." But what does this really mean? This expression is used to emphasize that someone is saying or doing nonsense or nonsense, but in clinical terms, what we really mean when we talk about delirium is something else.

The reference delusion is one of the many types that we know of delirium, so, to understand it, keep reading and in this article from Psychology-Online. We'll see what it is, the symptoms, causes and treatment of reference delirium.

Index

1. What is delusion of reference
2. Clinical manifestations or symptoms of baseline delirium
3. Causes of delusion of reference
4. Treatment of baseline delirium
5. Other types of delirium

A delirium by itself it is all false and incorrigible belief that is not in consonance with the social and cultural origin of the subject. It is established by a pathological pathway and constitutes the main axis of the patient's life, dominating his thought, but also his mood and his 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).

The reference delusion specifically, also known as self-referential delusion, it is considered one who 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 ideas of reference. In other words, it is the false belief that events, objects of other people's behavior and other perceptions (generally negative in nature) that the patient grasps are related to her person.

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

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

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

In the specific case of the delusion of reference, they would be those commented above, taking into account that the delusional theme to which he will refer will be the wrong personal attribution to the person himself.

Like other types of delirium, its course is chronic: it goes from suspicion to delusional creation, and to the consolidation of this in a delusion.

It is important to bear 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 a female predominance. Other things to keep in mind in delusions, and something that helps us differentiate it from other disorders on the psychotic spectrum, is its late onset. Usually from the age of 40.

There is no clear cause, although we know that mental health illnesses are the 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.

If it is true, that even without being able to make a rigorous association, there are factors, considered risk factors, that could help us. These are the use of drugs and psychotic substances, a history of previous delusional episodes, a family history of psychotic disorders or other pathologiess 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 the result of another medical condition or disorder, the main 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 main treatment will be for schizophrenia.

Above all, we must bear 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 the cognitive behavioral therapyTherefore, if we want to treat the delusion of reference specifically and in isolation, the therapy for this will be based on cognitive restructuring and confrontation in order to increase the person's capacity for rational judgment towards himself and to try to dismantle the construction he has made around the idea delirious.

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 celotypic: 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 (Sd. Of Ekbom)
13. False identifications (Capgras syndrome or Fregoli syndrome)

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online 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.

If you want to read more articles similar to Reference delirium: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

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