Accessible online at: www.karger.com/psp In delusional parasitosis a patient believes that he is infested with parasites or other small living organisms even though there is no supporting medical evidence. The disorder has been known for well over 100 years and has been given many different names. It is quite rare, occurring in 20 out of 10,000 psychiatric admissions [1–3], but the majority of ...

The false and fixed belief of being infected/infested by one or many different living organisms, such as insects or parasites, is not a common condition. Although several cases have been recorded since the end of the nineteenth century, it was the Swedish psychiatrist Karl-Axel Ekbom who first systematically studied the presenile syndrome of delusional dermatozoid parasitic infestation in 1938 ...

Bortolotti’s Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs defends the view that delusions are beliefs on a continuum with other beliefs. A different view is that delusions are more like illusions, that is, they arise from faulty perception. This view, which is not targeted by the book, makes it easier to explain why delusions are so alien and disabling but needs to appeal to forensic aspects of funct...

The body of knowledge on delusional parasites is incriminates “delusional patients” as having imaginary external and internal symptoms that feel like parasite movements, dismisses them as psychiatric cases, and confuses cause with effect. We are critical of these arguments and believe that the symptoms of crawling and pin-pricking are genuine; just misinterpreted as parasite movements. Based on...

Delusional parasitosis (DP) appears to be common in India. This condition is more prevalent in elderly people. Currently used treatment pimozide, a high potency antipsychotic, has disadvantage of extra-pyramidal symptoms & tardive dyskinesia in this age group. Hence there is a need to evaluate the use of high potency atypical antipsychotic risperidone in DP. This case report documents the effic...