Religious delusion

Religious delusion is a specific Wahnart, which manifests itself in delusions with religious themes.

Definition

A religious delusion is an unshakable belief idea or notion of a religious nature, which does not match the level of education or social and cultural background of the patient, and is represented with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty.

Religious issues occur according to recent studies on in about 20 to 30 percent of cases of schizophrenic delusions. This form is thus one of the most common delusional themes. In clinical practice, the religious mania is therefore an important issue, because it is accompanied by often severe physical self- injury.

The most common content of religious mania are convinced to be in direct communication with God or Jesus to be new, the redeemed the world ( religious mania with healing order). Especially religious delusions seem especially unreal, irritating and nonsensical. The religious mania theme must not develop from religious experience, but is more likely due to very " human conflicts ", such as marital problems.

Diagnostics

The person concerned is fixed egocentric his delusion content, that his thoughts and actions fed from it. Trapped in his " delusional system", he is immune to critical reasoning. Typical of the religious delusion is the exchange of dialog forms to be repetitive monologue structures.

Distinction of religious belief from religious delusions

If one religious faith over the religious delusion, some specific differences must be attached:

A delusional statement claiming knowledge, not faith. Thus, a person who is subject to a delusion, in the midst of an everyday conversation to refer to themselves as the Virgin Mary. This then is not a confession of their faith, but rather a statement about how this person perceives reality.

The religious faith allows a realistic self-assessment, the religious delusion it is overlaid by an overbearing self-assessment. In addition, the religious belief allows the inner distancing and questioning of religious content, whereas in the religious delusion fixed ideas determine the mind of the person concerned. The beliefs that are similar to those of the respective religious community in religious belief, are the religious delusion without any agreement and therefore not verifiable.

Impact on the social experience

The religious mania usually leads to alienation or at least a partial alienation of the person concerned of his environment. This is mainly because that the person with his delusional ideas alone standing there, so no one has, which represents the same beliefs. Only the possibility that the person concerned is in a fundamentalist group connection that has integrated its belief in its ideology, gives the patients the opportunity to integrate into a social fabric. Often the beliefs of delusional patients are so anomalous that can not be club ideology and individual conviction reduced to a common denominator.

Therapy

Religious delusions are symptoms show signs of a mental disorder, for example, a schizophrenic psychosis, but also in a variety of other mental disorders, such as depression or mania. The religious mania is, like many other forms of madness, not the actual disease, but the disease is expressed in delusions. Therefore, the treatment is different depending on the lying underlying mental disorder. Are used here various types of high-dose neuroleptics in combination with anti- depressive or manic medication.