Mental Illness In The Walking Dead

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STRANGEST MENTAL ILLNESSES RECORDED Hollywood movies often depict people with mental diseases as weird, scary, or dangerous to others around them. However, unless you are a specialist, in reality it is rarely possible to recognize a mental illness in a person—even a person you communicate with often. People tend to hide such health problems; moreover, sometimes they can even be unaware of having mental issues. So, the stereotype about psychotic weirdos that mass culture actively enforces is, mildly speaking, exaggerated. At the same time, it is true that some mental illnesses can severely distort one’s behaviors, perception of reality, cognitive functions, and emotional reactions, which may make them potentially dangerous to themselves (in…show more content…
The walking dead have become an irreplaceable element of contemporary mass culture. What is more shocking is that there are people who fit the description “living dead.” People suffering from Cotard’s syndrome develop a delusion that they have died. Despite indisputable logic that dead people cannot walk, talk, or think, patients with Cotard’s syndrome cannot shake their delusions off. For example, in 2012, Japanese doctors reported a man who addressed a hospital with the complaint about being dead. He wanted to get a second opinion just in case, but for him it was a fact. After approximately a year of therapy, the man got rid of the symptoms, but he still believed his condition was real. The same happened in 2008 with a 53-year-old New York lady who suddenly developed a conviction that she was dead, and smelled of rotting flesh. She asked her relatives to deliver her to morgue, so that she could stay with other dead people, but instead she was directed to psychiatrists, who quickly returned her back to normal. Sometimes, people with Cotard’s syndrome believe they lack organs, intestines, or limbs. For instance, Jules Cotard, who was the first to describe the disease, once treated a young woman who had developed a firm belief that she was missing her brain, chest, nerves, intestines, and that she was, generally speaking, hollow inside. At the same time, she believed that she was an immortal being, and had no need for…show more content…
Although it is not necessarily true, and many people with mental diseases are harmless and mostly self-absorbed, there are some exotic psychological conditions Hollywood would gladly put on screen. One of them is Cotard’s syndrome: a disease during which a person develops a belief that he or she has died, or is missing one or multiple vital organs, or is immortal and does not require nutrition. An even more exotic sickness is the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, which is characterized, among other symptoms, by self-mutilation and self-cannibalistic tendencies. There is also the Fregoli delusion—people suffering from it believe they are surrounded by impostors impersonating people dear to them. These, as well as other similar conditions, are rare, but still dangerous and requiring medical

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