LIST OF 20 RARE MENTAL ILLNESSES - ARTE - 2024

There are rare mental illnesses that by their symptoms seem taken from movies. Some produce surprising hallucinations, others extraordinary beliefs and other unusual behaviors. In this article we will mention 20 of them.

Do you have an acquaintance, friend or family member with a rare type of mental illness? There are many little known syndromes, even many doctors do not know their names.

You would like to know a little more about these psychiatric cases. If you put your mind to it, you can probably think of some examples of people who have some kind of disorder.

The 20 most surprising mental disorders

Capgras syndrome

This is a rare disorder that prevents people from being recognized. Specifically, it prevents recognizing people's faces and identifying them as family or close friends. Can you imagine what it would be like if you couldn't, for example, associate the face of your husband or wife with the image you are seeing?

Professionals maintain that Capgras syndrome is an alteration of the nervous system that disconnects the physical mechanism of visual recognition with affective memory.

That is, the person is not able to recognize the faces of the people he loves, although he has no problem identifying objects, for example. Disconnection occurs at the level of affective memory, and the "sensations" that the person experiences.

Tourette syndrome

In Tourette syndrome, people suffer from involuntary movements.

It is as if you are sitting down and suddenly you start moving your arm, as if it were a nervous tic. You want to control it but you can't. In this syndrome, symptoms come and go without a logical sequence.

In some patients, the frequency with which they repeat the movements increases over the years, in others, however, this does not happen.

Cotard syndrome

Are you ready to hear something really amazing? Well, there it goes: there are people who are completely convinced that they have died or that they just don't exist.

In 1880, a French neurologist and who owes the name of this disease, discovered this strange behavior. In Cotard syndrome, the patient comes to believe that his organs are rotten and that since he has already died, he believes that he will never die.

Munchausen syndrome

Can you imagine that a family member comes with a deep wound made by himself and tells you that someone has attacked him?

This can happen when a person suffers from a rare disease, known as Munchausen Syndrome. In addition to being injured, the person also simulates other symptoms, such as suffering from severe pain.

In this way, the patient seeks to benefit from the care and advantages that he can get from the situation. Even if you get angry with the person and try to make them see that their behavior is unfair and inappropriate, their brain cannot understand it.

Maybe at first he will tell you that you are right, but soon he will start with the same attitude again.

Diogenes syndrome

The name is attributed to a famous Greek philosopher who lived secluded in a wine barrel. Beyond the legend, this pathology generates an uncontrollable desire for seclusion and isolation.

Those who suffer from it, generally elderly people who live alone, tend to accumulate a lot of objects and waste in their home.

The sick person does not tolerate life in society. Although it is classified as a psychiatric illness, it also has a strong psychological component.

Trichotillomania

Trichotillomania is a type of manic disorder, in which the patient compulsively feels the desire to remove hair from any part of the body: heads, eyebrows, chest, etc.

Anosognosia

This disorder is one of the possible consequences of suffering a severe head injury. In this case, if the right part of the brain is damaged, partial or total paralysis of the left part of the body can occur.

What is unusual about this disease is that the patient believes that he is making a movement when in reality he is not. For example, when a person with anosognosia cannot move one hand, they are still convinced that they can grasp an object with both.

Even if he drops the object, he will believe that nothing abnormal has happened, since his two hands are useful.

Paris syndrome

It is a syndrome that occurs almost exclusively in Japanese. It happens mostly with Japanese who arrive in Paris and suffer a culture shock. But this goes beyond a naturally logical cultural difference.

It is a transient psychological disorder found in some individuals who visit Paris on vacation as a result of the extreme shock resulting from their discovery that Paris is not what they expected it to be.

Stendhal syndrome

Do you like art Can you imagine that being in a museum in front of a great art exhibition, you suddenly have an attack of anguish?

These are the symptoms of Stendhal syndrome, which occurs when the person is exposed to particularly beautiful works of art.

Jerusalem syndrome

This syndrome affects those who visit Jerusalem. People who suffer from it have a series of strange reactions when they visit this city.

Those who suffer from the Jerusalem syndrome are convinced that God has sent them there to make the message of the Bible alive. They are incarnated in the skin of the prophets, and they truly feel like such.

Blind vision

It is a disease that occurs at the brain level. People who have it can see physically, but are not aware of it.

This disorder has been studied extensively by researchers, although the mechanism by which patients cannot see, when in fact they can see, has yet to be discovered.

Hemispheric neglect

It is a disorder of the brain and it has a very peculiar consequence: patients only see half of things.

When a person suffering from this disease is asked to describe what they see, they only describe half a plate, half a blouse, etc. All objects are seen partially and exactly half.

Movement blindness

Similar to the previous one, the disorder affects the way in which the patient composes the image of what he sees. In this case, you see absolutely everything statically.

Imagine, for example, a child running after a ball. The person who suffers from movement blindness sees each of her steps in a static way. Your brain cannot interpret movement.

Frégoli syndrome

In this psychological illness the sick person feels permanently persecuted.

Those who suffer from it are fully convinced that there is a certain person who disguises himself or changes his physical appearance, who is always after him and who is everywhere.

Even if you explain that it is not so, they continue to see and perceive the same thing.

Body integrity identity disorder

This is one of the most cruel diseases from a physical point of view. The patient feels the urgent need to amputate a member of his body.

In this disease, the person sees that limb that wants to be amputated as a foreign element to his body. It can even become deeply unpleasant and annoying for you, preventing you from having a happy life.

Reduplicative paramnesia

In this case, the person is completely convinced that the same place exists in more than one physical location.

You think that a certain place, which is familiar to you, has been duplicated and relocated. It is a disorder in which the patient creates a kind of parallel worlds, in which both places coexist.

Lima syndrome

Palace of Justice of Lima

The name is due to the Peruvian capital, in which a favorable circumstance for this disease was experienced for the first time.

It occurs when the kidnappers or captors create an almost emotional bond with their victims, feeling sorry for them and beginning to contemplate their needs in a different way.

Stockholm syndrome

In Stockholm syndrome, it is the kidnapping victim who begins to experience affection and sympathy for her captors.

It was learned of a case in which a woman married one of the criminals who had taken her hostage in the attack on a bank.

Foreign accent syndrome

It is an unusual disorder that affects the area of ​​the brain that dominates language. In these cases, the patient acquires a completely different language pattern from his own.

So that you can understand it better, think about the following. Your native language is Spanish, so somehow you can say that you “think” in Spanish. Maybe you have studied other languages, like English, but when you speak Spanish, you think in Spanish.

But people with foreign accent syndrome suddenly begin to "think" in another language and even make sounds of that language, even though they continue to speak in their mother tongue.

Currently, only 50 cases have been identified worldwide.

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome

Many times you have heard that drinking a lot of alcohol can be harmful, right? Here we show you one of the possible consequences.

Korsakov syndrome is a mental disorder caused by chronic alcoholism, which makes patients unable to remember the most recent events. Can you imagine, for example, that you have recently celebrated your daughter's wedding, but cannot remember any details?

In this type of disorder, only short-term memory is the one that is altered. The person may remember events from many years ago but not those that happened a few days ago.