Doctors told about a very unusual case of a brain tumor. The result of the disease was that the patient became extremely religious, and at some stage tried to commit suicide.
The publication Frontiers in Psychiatry told about a very unusual case that happened to a 48-year-old woman who was admitted to a Swiss hospital. They found numerous wounds to her chest, the depth of which reached 7 cm. The woman stated that she had inflicted injuries on herself, as she was ordered to do so by "divine voices." And the speech, according to her, was about "religious self-sacrifice." After that, the hospital staff invited psychiatrists, but the problem, as it turned out, lay not so much in their area of competence, but in the area of competence of oncologists.
The patient stated that for the past three years she felt “blessed” and communicated with the voices in her head. She herself believed that they "come from heaven." According to the woman, there were two voices with which she could communicate for long hours and which talked to her on a variety of topics. Depending on the direction of communication, she felt frightened or, on the contrary, felt protected and blessed.
As the doctors later found out, throughout her life, the patient experienced bursts of religiosity several times, which then subsided. And for the first time she encountered something like this at the age of 13. After getting the big picture, psychiatrists concluded that the woman was suffering from psychosis. It was decided to have an MRI scan.
It was this that showed the presence of a brain tumor - malignant glioma. According to one of the authors of the study, Sebastian Walther (Sebastian Walther), the tumor probably appeared at an early age and grew at an extremely slow rate throughout life, periodically influencing the patient's behavior. Physicians cannot fully determine the mechanisms of the effect of the tumor on the views and experiences of the patient. Experts believe that as the glioma grows, it begins to put pressure on the adjacent areas of the brain, which are responsible for processing sound and influencing the formation of emotions. This eventually caused a religious upsurge and auditory hallucinations.
The location of the tumor does not allow an operation to remove it. Therefore, the doctors did everything they could in this situation, namely, prescribed antipsychotic drugs to the patient. They slowed down the development of hallucinations for a while. However, the latter reappeared after dose reductions.
Ilya Vedmedenko