Travel as a Trigger for Shared Delusional Parasitosis

Schwartz, Eli; Witztum, Eliezer; Mumcuoglu, Kosta Y.

doi:10.2310/7060.2001.1222

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Patients with DP suffer from the physical and psychological discomfort of their delusions as well as the sequelae of selfinflicted, often injurious treatments. 13,14 This study highlights the social impact of DP, revealing affected personal life in 87%, decreased employment in 63%, disrupted households in 63%, and reduced social contacts both within the home and with non-family members. The ethnicity of this patient population reflects the ethnic distribution of Seattle, supporting other reports that DP is a condition which crosses social and cultural boundaries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

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Delusional parasitosis: six-year experience with 23 consecutive cases at an academic medical center

Boggild

Nicks

Yen

et al. 2010

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…2,10 In our series, only 17% of patients accepted such a referral, and this level of resistance to psychiatric care is common. 2,10,13,14,17,18 Thus, strategies that encourage the uptake of referrals to physicians with specialized training in the management of primary delusional disorders would be beneficial.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delusional parasitosis: six-year experience with 23 consecutive cases at an academic medical center

Boggild

Nicks

Yen

et al. 2010

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

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“…To date, there are many reports of a folie à deux or a folie à trois, i.e., delusional belief shared by two or three people, respectively, in DI (6,60,97,111,112,115,155,165,192,194,231,250,299,300,308,322,342). There is one report of a folie à cinq (288) and three reports of a folie à famille (53,64,213), i.e., the participation of five family members or all of them.…”

Section: Inset 6 Shared Psychotic Disordersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delusional Infestation

Freudenmann

Lepping²

2009

Clin Microbiol Rev

235

367

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SUMMARY This papers aims at familiarizing psychiatric and nonpsychiatric readers with delusional infestation (DI), also known as delusional parasitosis. It is characterized by the fixed belief of being infested with pathogens against all medical evidence. DI is no single disorder but can occur as a delusional disorder of the somatic type (primary DI) or secondary to numerous other conditions. A set of minimal diagnostic criteria and a classification are provided. Patients with DI pose a truly interdisciplinary problem to the medical system. They avoid psychiatrists and consult dermatologists, microbiologists, or general practitioners but often lose faith in professional medicine. Epidemiology and history suggest that the imaginary pathogens change constantly, while the delusional theme “infestation” is stable and ubiquitous. Patients with self-diagnosed “Morgellons disease” can be seen as a variation of this delusional theme. For clinicians, clinical pathways for efficient diagnostics and etiology-specific treatment are provided. Specialized outpatient clinics in dermatology with a liaison psychiatrist are theoretically best placed to provide care. The most intricate problem is to engage patients in psychiatric therapy. In primary DI, antipsychotics are the treatment of choice, according to limited but sufficient evidence. Pimozide is no longer the treatment of choice for reasons of drug safety. Future research should focus on pathophysiology and the neural basis of DI, as well as on conclusive clinical trials, which are widely lacking. Innovative approaches will be needed, since otherwise patients are unlikely to adhere to any study protocol.

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“…UK residents are travelling abroad more frequently (12) with increased exposure risks for unusual infections and infestations. Travel has previously been described as a possible trigger for DI (13,14), as well as reports of cultural variation in the presentation of DI in different parts of the globe (15)(16)(17)(18). There have also been reports of DI where an individual could have been exposed to parasitic infection such as entomologists (Stanhope, Carver et al 2015) or animal owners presenting to vets with alleged symptoms of infestation in their pets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%