The types of delusions and hallucinations are often related to your depressed feelings. For example, some people may hear voices criticizing them, or telling them that they don't deserve to live. The person may develop false beliefs about their body, such as believing that they have cancer.
Some people who have severe depression may also experience hallucinations and delusional thinking, the symptoms of psychosis. Depression with psychosis is known as psychotic depression.
Depressive delusion is the key symptom of psychotic depression also known as major depressive disorder with psychotic features (ICD-10: F 32.3). Delusional topics are limited to guilt, impoverishment and hypochondria. Kurt Schneider described these as being the three primordial fears of human beings.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) with psychotic features is a distinct type of depressive illness in which mood disturbance is accompanied by either delusions, hallucinations, or both. Psychotic features occur in nearly 18.5% of patients who are diagnosed with MDD.
Grandiose delusions are usually associated with high self-esteem and self-serving attributional style and low levels of depression, anxiety and negative self-evaluation.
A mood-incongruent delusion is not consistent with the mental state of the individual experiencing the delusion. An example would be a depressed person who believes that their thoughts are being transmitted to their brain by another person.
Delusions classified as mood-congruent psychotic symptoms are 'delusions of guilt, worthlessness, bodily disease, or impending disaster', while mood-incongruent psychotic symptoms are characterized by 'persecutory or self-referential delusions and hallucinations without an affective content' (WHO, 1993: 84).
Individuals who have mood-congruent psychosis will have hallucinations and delusions that are consistent with their current mood. For instance, a patient going through a manic episode might believe that they are friends with the Queen of England and have had tea with her on many occasions when they clearly have not.
Nihilistic delusions, also known as délires de négation, are specific psychopathological entities characterized by the delusional belief of being dead, decomposed or annihilated, having lost one's own internal organs or even not existing entirely as a human being.
Types of delusions include persecutory, erotomanic, grandiose, jealous, somatic, mixed, and unspecified. Delusions often revolve around a specific theme, such as love, guilt, religion, or infidelity.
Hearing voices is the most common type of hallucination in people with these mental health conditions. Other mental health conditions that may cause hallucinations include: Bipolar disorder: People with bipolar disorder can experience hallucinations during both severe depressive or severe manic episodes.
Cotard syndrome is a rare condition characterized by nihilistic delusions concerning body or life that can be found in several neuropsychiatry conditions. It is typically associated with depressive symptoms.
In the context of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions may be considered mood congruent (such as feelings of personal inadequacy, guilt, or worthlessness during a bipolar disorder depressive episode) or incongruent.
Of these, the majority had mood-congruent psychotic features and they were found primarily in patients with manic symptoms.
If a person is euthymic, they are feeling relatively neutral, and are not extremely happy or sad. Congruent affect means that their emotions match the situation.
For example, if a person is diagnosed as clinically depressed, you would expect him to be sad and crying, since those symptoms are congruent with a depressed state. People diagnosed with bipolar mania might be loud, hyper, and distracted; again, these symptoms are congruent with that diagnosis.
For example, when people are in pleasant moods, they retrieve comparatively more pleasant memories and judge the likelihoods of pleasant events as being more likely; when they are in unpleasant moods, they retrieve more negative memories and judge many unpleasant events as being more likely.
An example of incongruent behavior is when someone says they will start working as soon as he buys a new car. This person buys a new car with the help of their partner or spouse but does not start working. This behavior is incongruent because his statement does not match his actions.
Common somatic delusions are that the person is infested by insects or parasites, that he or she is emitting a foul odor, that parts of the body are not functioning, or that certain parts of the body are misshapen and ugly even in the absence of objective evidence.
Some examples of persecutory delusions include: Being spied on by someone who means harm or who is part of a conspiracy. Being followed or tracked. Being lied to or given misinformation.
Difference between paranoia and persecutory delusions
Persecutory delusions are when those feelings of paranoia become a more fixed belief. While paranoia might be temporary and soothed by opposing evidence, persecutory delusions are strong, irrational beliefs that don't change if you see proof that contradicts them.