In this paper we review two debates in the current literature on clinical delusions. One debate is about what delusions are. If delusions are beliefs, why are they described as failing to play the causal roles that characterise beliefs, such as being responsive to evidence and guiding action? The other debate is about how delusions develop. What processes lead people to form delusions and maint...

Although delusions are prima facie evidence of psychosis, their mere presence is not a sufficient condition for exculpation on the grounds of insanity. In most cases, a determination of insanity will depend on the specific content of the delusions and whether, as a result of these delusions, the defendant was unable to know or appreciate the wrongfulness of his or her act. Delusions may be subd...

Although delusions of reference are one of the most common psychotic symptoms, they have been the focus of little research. The aims of the present research were, first, to determine whether it is possible to identify different kinds of referential delusions reliably and, if so, to investigate associations among them and between these delusions and other positive psychotic symptoms. Participant...

Background Delusional thinking is one of the hallmark symptoms of schizophrenia. However, the underlying neural substrate for delusions in schizophrenia remains unknown. In an attempt to further our understanding of the neural basis of delusions, we explored gray matter deficits and their clinical associations in first-episode schizophrenia patients with and without delusions. Methods Twenty-...

OBJECTIVE To examine the hypothesis that the "natural" combination of delusions and hallucinations in psychotic disorders in fact represents a selection of early subclinical hallucinatory experiences associated with delusional ideation, resulting in need for care and mental health service use. METHODS In the Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology study, a prospective, 10-year follow-up...

BACKGROUND Cognitive models propose that cognitive and emotional processes, in the context of anomalies of experience, lead to and maintain delusions. No large-scale studies have investigated whether persecutory and grandiose delusions reflect differing contributions of reasoning and affective processes. This is complicated by their frequent cooccurrence in schizophrenia. We hypothesized that p...

BACKGROUND Structural brain abnormalities associated with delusions in Alzheimer's disease are poorly understood. In addition, whether the neural substrate underlying the delusions develops before the onset of the delusions is unclear. In this study, we used a voxel-based morphometry approach to examine the existence of regional structural abnormalities at baseline in patients with Alzheimer's ...

objectives: new cognitive theories of delusions have proposed that deficit or bias in inference stage (a stage of normal belief formation) is significant in delusion formation. the aim of this study was predicting the severity of delusions based on jumping-to-conclusion bias in patients with schizophrenia. methods: the sample consisted of 60 deluded patients with schizophrenia who were selected...

DSM-III proposes that only persecutory delusions and delusions of jealousy can occur in paranoid disorders, all other types of delusions in the absence of an affective syndrome being indicative of schizophrenia. The scant empirical evidence relevant to this issue suggests that the type of delusion on admission is not predictive of outcome in patients with paranoid psychosis. These findings rais...

The aim of the article is to present the contemporary concepts of delusions from the phenomenological perspective. The difficulties to define delusions and the examples of delusional disorders, such as delusional mood, Cotard’s syndrome, or Capgras delusions, serve as the point of departure for this analysis. The questions of the phenomenological understanding of delusions are presented in the ...