Hi, everyone! I wondered if you could help me. I was thinking about one character, you know, so my antagonist would not feel alone . I wondered whether you know about some psychiatric diagnosis which includes hallucinations of someone or something, and hearing voices, but at the same time does not damage intelligence, logic, speech, and basically the character behaves almost like any other characters/persons who are right in their heads (sorry for those words), so no one would expected that character would be able to kill a horse, not to mention man or even men. Perhaps one strange thing would be her isolation, for example, or it may look like she is occasionally absent-minded, but nothing obvious that one could immediately say that she is not right in her head. It is a female character below 25. The diagnosis should culminate within one year or even less, let´s say half a year. The trigger point would be a death of someone very close to her, but she may suffer from minor symptoms even before this point. You know, she may occasionally hear unknown voices or see unknown people. But after reaching the trigger point, she will start to see and hear this person close to her everyday, and not just once per day. As the disease will become worse and worse, she can see and hear this person nonstop. Eventually she can be at risk of committing a suicide. Actually, she could commit a suicide at the end of the story. The whole story is taking place in medieval times around 11th or 12th century in the imaginary world, so there is no need to think about any cure. And I have already "deleted" syphilis. I know I am demanding and if there is not any diagnosis to meet the "conditions", it is OK. I will make up something else. But it would "open" a way to interesting new ideas and, of course, it would make my story much more interesting. Thank you in advance for your help.
Psychotic depression- It varies from person to person, but typically its someone who suffers from major depression who also shows symptoms of psychosis. So this could be hearing voices or sounds, like you want. Hope this helps
@Leanne I had no idea Medieval Psychiatry was so sophisticated. Severe Depression coupled with Schizophrenia would be my best guess. Seeing as the latter is accompanied by hearing voices and/or hallucinations causing paranoia or delusional tendencies. Perhaps the person who has passed, is the one driving her to do the things she does. Until she snaps and takes her life in consequence in a moment of levity or realization.
It would explain how they can to talk to the dead though, in a sense. Unless you are going to build up a psychosis that gives your MC agency to speak with the dead, and tack on depression as an added bonus? You might want to do a bit of hard research into mental conditions that would be most fitting for your MC. Half the fun, is research.
Psychotic depression can make you hear the voices of the dead, and it also gives you depression (obviously)
IDK, not a shrink am I. Never heard of that anywho. Not saying you're wrong. That is why I suggested the OP to do some research into the matter.
You mean auditory hallucinations? Yes? If a medical professional told me that—that my illness could channel the voices of the deceased—I'd hope the only possession I'd have would be the wherewithal to report them.
I'd also like to inform you being in the system. Diagnosis take a long time. It took me 6 months to even get an official diagnosis.
One thing to remember about psychotic depression is that the psychotic symptoms are mood-congruent - they match the mood state they occur in. For example, believing that you're dead is a pretty typical delusion for psychotic depression.
Disassociative disorder. Disassociatives are sane and know when they hallucinate, that it's not normal thing, and so they know what is normal or not. Which is unlike Schizophrenics. They are very hard to diagnose cause psychiatrists always think they are lying about stuff. As far as affecting speech, I think there are different levels of disassociatives, but there would also be confusion at times, memory loss, difficulty feeling close to people because they get emotionally numb. Also as a side note in Mr. Robot, he has a disorder that doesn't really exist, (upcoming spoiler for season 1) which is hallucinating a single person into existence and believing they are real. They based it loosely off of one real case. You could then read some cases of people, look through stuff but also change it to fit your story?
