Cotard Delusion

The Cotard delusion, also called Cotard's syndrome, is a rare psychiatric condition in which a person holds the delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. The French neurologist and psychiatrist Jules Cotard first described the condition in 1880, calling it le delire des negations, or the delusion of negation. The syndrome has been described as unfolding across three stages: an early germination stage involving psychotic depression and hypochondria, a blooming stage in which the full syndrome develops and negation delusions become fixed, and a chronic stage of persistent severe delusions accompanied by depression; affected people commonly withdraw socially, neglect their own hygiene, and develop profoundly distorted beliefs about their own body and existence. One proposed neurological explanation holds that misfiring within brain regions responsible for facial recognition and its normal emotional associations, including the fusiform face area and the amygdalae, prevents a person from recognizing their own reflection or self-image as belonging to them, potentially giving rise to the belief that they no longer exist. The delusion frequently occurs alongside schizophrenia, severe clinical depression, derealization, brain tumors and migraines, and can also follow traumatic brain injury, parietal lobe damage, or an adverse reaction to certain medications.