Psychotic-like experiences in conduct disorders – a case report

Abstract

Psychotic symptoms in children and adolescents are an important and, at the same time, interesting issue. Current ICD-10 and DSM-5 criteria for mental disorders obviously fail to exhaust the richness of psychopathologies and to fully describe patient’s experiences. Differentiation of psychotic experiences is of particular importance in pediatric psychiatry. A number of phenomena that can be classified as psychotic either occur as a variant of normal or, as reported in studies, have no clinical significance. We describe a case of an adolescent who, with a thoughtless use of criteria, could have been easily diagnosed with schizophrenia; however, a more thorough interview and observation allowed for identification of the phenomenology of psychotic symptoms in the course of conduct disorders. The paper discusses the differential diagnosis, which allowed for the diagnosis of dissociative and conduct disorders in the described patient.