La Folie à Deux

Shared psychotic disorder

“…Shared psychotic disorder was historically referred to as folie à deux . First coined by Lasegue and Falret in 1877, folie à deux describes the phenomena ‘of a transference of delusional ideas and/or abnormal behaviours from one person to one or more others who have been in close association with the primary patients’ 1 . Presently it is represented in both the DSM‐5 (as shared psychotic disorder) and in the ICD‐11 (as induced delusional disorder).…”

“…First coined by Lasegue and Falret in 1877, folie à deux describes the phenomena 'of a transference of delusional ideas and/or abnormal behaviours from one person to one or more others who have been in close association with the primary patients'. 1 Presently it is represented in both the DSM-5 (as shared psychotic disorder) and in the ICD-11 (as induced delusional disorder). Despite this, it is still something of a rarity to see clinically, but this may not accurately reflect the prevalence among the general public as individuals often evade coming into contact with services as relatively sufficient levels of functioning are often maintained.…”

On the origin of mass casualty incidents in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, in 1990

“…Bartholomew [23] listed 75 terms used over the last 150 years to identify the sources of this condition. Many of them, containing descriptors such as 'psychosis' [35], 'madness' [36], 'psychotic' and 'folie' [37], as well as 'hysteria' [22,27,38], point to an overt psychiatric disorder. In practice, however, there is little evidence that more than a tiny proportion of all cases, if any, are mentally ill [23,26,39].…”

Symptom Formation

“…Burton-Bradley [11] and Faguet and Friedman [ 12] cite specific processes that ap pear to be indigenous to the culture. In our time, the post-Vietnam anamnestic experi ences of veterans and the ruministic guilt processes of survivors of the Holocaust serve as syndromes in their own right, albeit both have similarities with aberrant grief pro cesses [13][14][15][16].…”

“…In our time, the post-Vietnam anamnestic experi ences of veterans and the ruministic guilt processes of survivors of the Holocaust serve as syndromes in their own right, albeit both have similarities with aberrant grief pro cesses [13][14][15][16]. Culture-bound syndromes such as koro, amok, cargo cult syndromes in East Asia, latah, windigo, and piblokto largely in northern countries, as well as other conditions such as those observed in the Aus tralian aborigines have been studied with an intent to extract the variables common to Western diagnostic schemes [12], Neverthe less, most of these retain one or more vari ables that make each unique even when one or more common variables such as schizo phrenia or depression are identified. Thus, despite identifiable factors common to some of these phenomena across cultures, the pre sentation and elaboration of symptoms are culturally and temporally influenced.…”