What makes living people think they are dead? Is it absurd, you say? Meanwhile, we are talking about a rare mental illness that affects only a few hundred people in the world. They are really convinced that life has left them and they are only by misunderstanding in this world … True, unlike the real dead, they can still be cured.
Cotard's syndrome - this is the official name of this disease - according to doctors, is one of the varieties of depression. The first such case was recorded in 1880 by the French neurologist Jules Cotard. The manifestations of the disease can be very different. Some patients lose the ability to move their limbs. Others cannot eat. Some try to commit suicide, for example, to burn themselves with acid in order to "free" from the "dead" flesh …
In 2008, a 53-year-old New Yorker told her relatives that she was dead and smelled like rotting fish. The woman asked to take her to the morgue, where she could be with other dead people … But instead, her relatives called her an ambulance. After a month of treatment, the lady recovered.
A patient named Graham, a British resident, was diagnosed with Cotard syndrome nine years ago. One fine morning, the man woke up and felt confident that he had already passed away. He could neither eat nor smoke, he did not want to talk to anyone.
“I didn't want to see anyone. It didn't make any sense,”Graham recalls. - I didn't feel pleasure from anything. I used to idolize my car, but I was no longer interested in it. I was only worried about death. I lost my sense of smell and taste. I didn't want to eat because I was dead. Conversations seemed like a waste of time and I stopped talking. I didn't even have any thoughts."
The man's hair began to fall out, and he stopped brushing his teeth - it seemed to him that if his teeth turned black, it would be more consistent with the "image" of a dead man. But at the same time, somewhere on a subconscious level, he realized that he was still alive. “I had no choice but to accept the fact that I had no way to actually die. It was a nightmare,”says Graham. He began to visit the local cemetery regularly: “I just felt that I could stay there. There I was closest to death."
The family nevertheless insisted that Graham see doctors, and they sent him for examination at the University of Liege in Belgium. "There came a man who says he's dead!" - reported the secretary to the professor, to whom Graham was at the reception. The scans showed that the activity in the frontal and parietal areas of the patient's brain is too low, as if he was in a state of sleep. It took months of therapy and medication for the patient to more or less return to normal. A somewhat more common kind of phobia is the fear of death. Gogol's father, in particular, suffered from it. They say that it was this disease that brought him to the grave.
Most often, people with this phobia fear that their heart will stop. For example, in a dream … They may even stop sleeping because of this. Insomnia and constant stress undermine their health, which can indeed be fatal.
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But the death drive can be not only a disease, but also a worldview. It is called thanatology. The Goths are a prime example of this. Representatives of this informal movement believe that peace and happiness can only be found in the afterlife, and while waiting for the transition there they yearn, read horror novels, compose poems and songs, paint pictures about the otherworldly reality …
Goths are very fond of spending time in cemeteries (the love of cemeteries is called taphophilia). When asked about the reason for this pastime, they reply that they enjoy the sense of peace and tranquility that pervades the cemetery atmosphere. They give preference to "Gothic" - ancient burials with beautiful, pretentious tombstones.
Alas, unlike the same Cotard syndrome, such a philosophy of life cannot be cured. Probably only time can heal it and make informals enjoy ordinary life, and not strive for games with death. After all, sooner or later young people will grow up, and they will have other interests.
TRINITY MARGARITA