r/todayilearned • u/1998199888 • 1d ago
TIL about Delusional parasitosis, sometimes referred to as phantom infestation, is a psychological disorder in which an individual mistakenly believes their body is overrun by living or inanimate entities. Typical examples of these perceived invaders include bugs, worms, or microbes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_parasitosis621
u/AKBonesaw 1d ago
I knew a girl who went on a beach vacation with her family when we were in our teens. She fell asleep for a period while sunbathing. When she awoke she felt an itch in her sinus cavity. Over the next couple days/week she felt an irritating sensation in her sinus cavity that wouldn’t go away.
The source of the irritation was not clearly visible but she was given something for sinus infection at a local clinic.
When she returned home with her family, her complaint became worse over the next weeks.
The girl couldn’t sleep, was constantly complaining of ‘bugs’ in her nose. She was given a stronger antibiotic for her ‘sinus infection’.
Several weeks went by with the girl becoming psychotic and tearing at her sinus in her sleep to her parents horror. They took her to the doctor where they discovered a nearly full grown botfly larvae deep in her sinus cavity that had grown to the size of a peanut.
The tropics can be terrifying.
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u/SitInCorner_Yo2 1d ago
I regret that I have learned English good enough to understand every word in this post.
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u/keyblade_crafter 1d ago
Want me to take it away? Just go to the tallest tower in the area with a polyglot and you can swap out english for one they know. They don't lose this language, simply pass it on. If you are a polyglot, you can choose to give up the language
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u/HyruleTrigger 1d ago
I have a friend who I met in college because she was having a severe episode of Delusional Parasitosis. She told me that it felt like bugs crawling all over her skin. She knew that it wasn't true but the feeling was so overwhelming that she couldn't even move. I sat with her until she stopped crying and tried to get her to come to class. She didn't, but she was able to stand up and go back to her dorm to sleep.
A year later she thanked me for being the only person to actively try to help her. This was almost 20 years ago. Now she's got a PhD, a husband (whom I think very highly of) and two kids. I am really glad she's doing ok, now.
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u/chronic_wonder 21h ago
Can I ask if they ever found out what was causing the delusions?
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u/seapube 20h ago
From what it sounds like, stress and depression
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u/chronic_wonder 20h ago
Sure, but that doesn't trigger delusions in everyone. I'm trying to understand whether delusions tend to be linked to an underlying mental health condition, such as anxiety or schizophrenia, or whether there may be other causative factors.
It sounds as though some cases at least may be related to other medical causes, such as vitamin B12 deficiency, meningitis or stroke and I find it quite interesting that this seems to have been an isolated incident and she was otherwise able to resume a normal life.
Can I ask if you were the one who downvoted? Nbd if you did but someone's going around downvoting everything on my account and I'm trying to figure out who to block.
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u/SchillMcGuffin 1d ago
Of course, we are all full of microbes. Mostly not invaders, but they have no ID.
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u/datascience45 1d ago
Illegal microbes without ID. Better deport them.
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u/BeMoreKnope 1d ago
Considering what would happen to the human body if we did, this is an amazingly apt analogy.
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u/CupidStunt13 1d ago
Those with the condition often collect such "evidence" to present to medical professionals. Medical professionals call this the "matchbox sign", "Ziploc bag sign" or "specimen sign." The name stems from the fact that the evidence is typically stored in a small container, like a matchbox. The matchbox sign is present in five to eight out of every ten people with DP. Related is a "digital specimen sign", in which individuals bring collections of photographs to document their condition.
Interesting how the "matchbox sign" is such a common thing with people who have the condition. But it makes sense as they attempt to "prove" their condition to the skeptical doctors or other professionals who are attending to them. It also matches what I've read about people with the related condition of Morgellons, with people collecting random fibre samples or other tiny objects they believe came out of their skin.
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u/SynKnightly 1d ago
I used to know a lady who experienced this and it's was so sad and awkward when she'd show me little ziplock bags with nothing in them. She would talk about pulling these living fibers out of her skin in the oddest places....eyelids, ear lobes...as well as arms and legs and hands. She described pulling like bug parts out too. Like bug legs and pieces of wings. I never knew what to say when she would show me these empty bags she thought had evidence in them. I didn't want to make her feel alienated or judged but I also couldn't go along with it bc I didn't want to validate a delusion. It was tough to navigate that situation. I would just tell her I didn't know what to make of it bc I couldn't see them and she should talk to a doctor, hoping she'd find one who would treat her for mental illness. She associated the things in her skin with chem trails. It was sad. She was a public school teacher, I think. She knew the name of it as morgellans but to her it was some conspiracy....idk exactly to what end.
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u/Aggressive_Use_8544 1d ago
I'm pretty sure my dad had this for a time. He may still have it and I'm just not aware. He would bathe with Borax powder, spray rubbing alcohol on himself and bug bomb his home regularly. The delayed allergic reaction to these things only served as evidence of the infestation in his mind. He had a microscope in his bathroom and sent several samples out to be inspected. He also made his doctors do several skin punches to try and find whatever he thought he had infesting his body and home.
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u/galaxy_to_explore 1d ago
My grandpa was like that. He would constantly clean his home from top to bottom and wash with special shampoos, all because he thought he had scabies. It got so bad he completely isolated himself and refused to see us for several years. Crazy thing is that he hadn't had scabies for ages. For some reason, the systems persisted despite the infestation being long gone.
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u/Gladiatorra 1d ago
I once came across a Reddit thread where a bunch of people were talking about fibers coming out of their skin and doctors never being able to help them. It was unsettling how convinced they all were, but didn't want to talk to anyone about it because they didn't want to be called crazy. They were so relieved to talk to others suffering the same thing.
I've always wondered if there was an actual condition. Thanks for the info!
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u/kllark_ashwood 13h ago
I also came across this before; it sounded like what happens to me when I have a really bad eczema flare-up. You itch the region, and it weeps fluids, making your skin sticky, so you pick up various fibers from day-to-day life, and they stick to you.
It really freaked me out as a kid and I might have fallen down that rabbit hole but luckily my grandmother had a really distinctly coloured blanket that shed a lot and made itself really known on my legs which made me catch what was actually happening.
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u/agnes_mort 1d ago
I work in a lab, and once received a bottle of methylated spirits with the ‘parasites’ having been collected from the patient. They’d scraped their skin off and it didn’t contain anything other than bits of epidermis and foreign material. No bugs, no fungi, no parasites. Was very interesting.
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u/arrec 1d ago
I have a relative with this condition. Highly intelligent, well educated, successful. He says doctors are embarrassed at their failure to diagnose and that's why they can't find anything.
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u/Dragonfly-Adventurer 1d ago
There was actually an entomologist that had this and documented it thoroughly - as an "unusual scalp dermatitis in humans caused by [a specific mite]" before realizing she had fallen victim to it, and getting a retrospective diagnosis. Fascinating window into it - education does not protect you from this.
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u/canvanman69 1d ago edited 1d ago
Back when I was in the military, I had to stay in some questionable accomodations. Folks were billeted there after extensive field activities.
Ended up with an itchy scalp. I thought it was lice or something but couldn't find anything. Despite looking extensively there was nothing to be found. Brought it up with the medical folks and ended up collecting a bunch of dust and debris from the area that appeared after cleaning to look under a microscope in the medical unit. We did not find anything.
I ended up cleaning the unit thoroughly then treating my scalp to a generous application of DEET after showering every day for a couple of weeks.
I suspect the folks in the field brought back some particularly voracious species of skin mites.
It went away on it's own after awhile. But it was pure hell for that month or two it happened. I was just itchy as hell at all times.
That being said, these sorts of cases might not be psychosomatic or imaginary, they can be caused by things we cannot see or effectively determine with the tools we have available.
Even viral infections can cause these sorts of symptoms.
A great example is Rabies. It spreads through the nervous system to your brain. So it and other viruses that infect your nervous system are problematic when it comes to treatment because detection is very difficult. Antibodies are the current method of testing, and thats great but this only happens after your immune system detects and begins fighting off the viral infection. With rabies, this is preferable before the virus finds it way anywhere near your brain.
These sorts of viruses can cause neuronal stimulation and because your immune system can't as effectively deal with infections of your nervous system they can persist indefinitely.
In the case of rabies, it's death. But MS is linked to Epstein-Barr virus, as your immune system begins attacking your own nervous system to rid itself of the virus. So, MS very well might be your body misidentifying your own cells as foreign and thus fighting the "virus" off indefinitely.
mRNA vaccines are an interesting new tool we have, but it is one of the issues in medicine we need to work on.
We can basically train the immune system for anything now, but your immune system isn't perfect. If it decides that your own body is what it needs to attack, it'll do it. The myocarditis cases with COVID are a good example. Immune cells began attacking the lining of your bodies major blood vessels and heart tissue resulting in inflammation.
We may even have next generation treatment options, like folks undergoing chemotherapy to completely wipe out the bone marrow's long term storage and production of memory B-cells then a bone marrow transplant with your own bone marrow comprosed of a customized set of your own immune cells with any that target your own tissue deleted from it's repository of antibodies.
Science and medicine is about to get very, very interesting.
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u/BrownboyInc 1d ago
My mother had a nervous breakdown after the death of a close friend and developed this delusion
She was insistent that there were worms growing under her skin. I can’t even tell you how many times I picked her up from the ER. They would treat immediate injuries, and give her meds to calm her down, but then would just send her home. because my stepfather didn’t want her to seek mental help.
At its worst, she was slicing herself open everywhere with craft knives. When we took those from her, she started using kitchen knives. Then nail clippers. We even caught her using a dremel tool to cut them out, and she tried using lit cigarettes to burn them out.
To be clear, there were NEVER worms under her skin. When she would “pull one out” to show us, her palm would be empty. When she would point to her skin where she spotted a worm, it would be a normal patch of skin. When we caught her slicing herself up, digging through bloody skin, there would be no pile of slain worms. Only blood pooling on the floor.
When I would take her in, she would mostly be belligerent, so I would talk to the doctors privately when I could. It took a dozen or more visits before a nurse suggested they prescribe an ointment (I don’t recall the name) that was effective with skin borne parasites. The ER doctor prescribed a tube for everyone in my family.
This seemed to help a little, as she stopped cutting herself. Eventually, she developed a different delusion and forgot about the worms entirely.
I would not wish this on my worst enemy
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u/PM_ME_UR_ROUND_ASS 1d ago
This is why pimozide (an antipsychotic) is considered first-line treatment for delusional parasitosis - it actually relieves the crawling sensations, not just the delusion, which is why that ointment probly helped your mom temproarily.
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u/ilovecheeseburgers16 1d ago
hmm like those morgellons ppl
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u/jaylw314 1d ago
Not the same thing. Morgellons spreads from person to person, and that is not an expect risk for people with delusions otherwise, so it's hard to argue people with delusions have anything in common with Morgellons other than some resemblance.
Delusional disorder with delusional parasitosis long predated Morgellons and social media
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u/Welpe 1d ago
Morgellons is specifically classified as a form of delusional parisitosis.
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u/jaylw314 1d ago
Morgellons is not specifically classified as anything. Likewise, plenty of case reports don't involve reports of parasite. Source: psychiatrist
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u/matarky1 1d ago
There's actually a chapter of a great book about this called 'The Unpersuadables: Adventures With the Enemies of Science' that goes into people with Morgellons and how nobody takes them seriously and consider it delusion. One person is a doctor who got Morgellons himself and pulled a form of tropical mite out of his skin. The whole book is to question our preconceived notions, would recommend if this sort of thing is intriguing.
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u/jaylw314 1d ago
That looks good, thanks. I used to be more interested in Morgellons and other such phenomena, but the wave of science denial kind of turned me off to the whole thing
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u/TheWalkinFrood 1d ago
When I first started taking adderal, I hadn't really taken the whole 'no caffeine' rule to heart yet, so I got a large double shot.
The bugs. Under my skin. Crawling. Itching.
True, I knew they weren't actually there but Jesus fuck that was unpleasant.
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u/MDunn14 1d ago
I get the skin crawls nightly. It’s so uncomfortable, but thankfully I know it’s just a feeling and not real.
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u/TheWalkinFrood 1d ago
Do you get it because you use adderal or other adhd drug?
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u/MDunn14 1d ago
I don’t use any stimulants except coffee sometimes. I do believe it’s related to some nerve damage and a TBI I got a few years ago tho. It’s also possible it’s tied to my autism but as far as I know I don’t have ADHD
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u/TheWalkinFrood 1d ago
Hugs I hope you can find something to combat it. I couldn't imagine having that feeling every night.
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u/cannotfoolowls 1d ago
It's a known sideffect of stimulants. Part of the reason meth users often have bad skin.
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u/TheWalkinFrood 1d ago
Why isn't that the case with cocaine, though?
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u/cannotfoolowls 1d ago
It can be but I assume it's because the effects of cocaine don't last as long.
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u/peachykehn 1d ago
ONCE A GUY stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.
Having nothing else to do or think about, he began to work out theoretically the life cycle of the bugs, and, with the aid of the Britannica, try to determine specifically which bugs they were. They now filled his house. He read about many different kinds and finally noticed bugs outdoors, so he concluded they were aphids. After that decision came to his mind it never changed, no matter what other people told him... like "Aphids don't bite people."
They said that to him because the endless biting of the bugs kept him in torment. At the 7-11 grocery store, part of a chain spread out over most of California, he bought spray cans of Raid and Black Flag and Yard Guard. First he sprayed the house, then himself. The Yard Guard seemed to work the best. As to the theoretical side, he perceived three stages in the cycle of the bugs. First, they were carried to him to contaminate him by what he called Carrier-people, which were people who...
--a Scanner Darkly, by Phillip K Dick
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u/Buscemi_D_Sanji 1d ago
They nailed it in the movie too, though they combined Jerry with Freck which I thought was a good call
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u/JoefromOhio 1d ago
There’s a surprisingly good movie ‘bug’ with Michael Shannon that I’m pretty sure deals with this to an extreme
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u/ninjabunnyfootfool 1d ago
Scrolled down looking for this to be mentioned!
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u/FadedEdumacated 1d ago
Me too. Movie still creeps me out. The pliers scene. I can't get it out of my head.
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u/DoktorJesus 1d ago
I worked in an urgent care clinic and we had a frequent flyer with delusional parasitosis. Shit is scary. The patient had a whole story about how they had a friend stay with them after traveling to the tropics, and that friend had vicious diarrhea, and that they witnessed a parasite jump from the toilet and burrow into their skin. They would show up multiple times a week with "specimens" which never contained any kind of parasite but did have a number of concerning bodily fluids. One time, they brought a jar full of water and explained that it used to have two parasites inside, but one ate the other then ate itself.
All the while, their arms grew more and more pockmarked from scratching and picking at scabs. Any attempt to convince them that it was psychological was met with frustration and anger.
The whole thing was terrifying. I hope the person eventually found help.
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u/devo197979 1d ago
Those poor people. Can't even imagine how difficult it must be to go through that.
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u/ninjagorilla 1d ago
I see one of these patients maybe every 2-3 months and they are always tough. Because it’s a delusion there is no amount of testing, convincing, or explaining you can do that will get them to believe. You can’t test for everything and then show them the result because they will 100% not believe the tests. This is what I used to do when I was younger. It had a hard 0% success rate. The only two options is to either a. Straight up tell them it’s a delusion, deal with the usually explosive and angry reaction to that, and be done with the patient, or try to convince them to take an antipsychotic under the guise of “treating the infection” which feels ethically scummy to me bc I never deceive patients… and half the time they refuse to take it anyway.
I’d be curious to hear from any trained psychiatrists out there how this is handled bc they are always AWFUL interactions and typically leave mad at you and no closer to treatment
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u/softshellcrab69 8h ago
Even when I was a medical receptionist, these patients were so hard to help. So many times I been trapped on the phone with them while they explain in detail how there are bugs in their penis. Chart flags that are pages long of "patient has been discharged from xyz d/t aggresive behaviors." And I had to be like okay, but why do you want to see an orthopedic surgeon? Meanwhile they have like 6 open psych referrals :(
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u/AccomplishedAide8698 1d ago
I had this after staying up for 3 days on speed when I was a teenager. I could see these bugs all over me. I screamed the house down and begged my Dad to take me to the hospital. Screamed at all the doctors and begged them to take me seriously. A wise doctor pretended to take me seriously and 'collected' one of the bugs off my skin and put it in a test tube and told me to go home and get some sleep and they'd test the bug overnight. I felt so vindicated!
I went home and got some much needed sleep. I woke up the next day and instantly face-palmed over the previous night's temporary madness. Crazy how your own brain can betray you if it goes wrong or is pushed by pharmaceuticals into states it isn't meant to be in.
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u/ghost_of_mr_chicken 1d ago
After day 3, speed ain't no joke. I never got the bug thing, but shadows or little reflections would blatantly move and freak the hell out of me. Dealt with alot of paranoia because of that.
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u/iwantauniquename 18h ago edited 18h ago
Yeah I developed a weird version of this when I used crystal meth. I think maybe it started when I had dropped some on the floor..."carpet surfing " is fairly common in stimulant users.
But this soon turned into something different: I was obsessed with the tiny sparkling crystals all over everything. I would get stuck on the floor, crawling around sorting the dust into desirable and non desirable piles.
Then I noticed that some sparkles had stuck to my bare skin.
Or were they actually coming from my skin? Was I exuding some kind of crystal? It seemed to be irritating my skin, I rubbed at it with my fingertips...
Particularly around any old cut or scab, lots of sparkly crystals there...weird, what could they be?
It can't be though. Ummmm. And what about the quilt on my bed?
I picked it up by the corners and began feeding it through my fingers cm by cm, picking off any suspect crystals off the taut fabric...
My skin felt gritty.
On all fours, I examined my pale clammy body....
Jesus it was horrifying. I would ache from contorting, alternately scampering around the dirty floor, then grooming myself like a chimp. For hours and hours, picking at my skin, the floor,my skin, the floor, fingertips black and themselves sore and bleeding.
Utterly deluded but compelled to continue. Inside screaming "stop, stand up, get a shower" but always " in a minute just a bit longer".
Scary drug, this all started quite quickly (I am predisposed to mania and the meth triggered it spectacularly), I mean it felt amazing before all this started, although there were definitely other problems with that, too! But the psychosis would trigger every time after that and always the same way
Good to remember why I am sober.
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u/AccomplishedAide8698 18h ago
Proud of you getting sober 👏 Defintely good to remember the darks times to help ignore the lure. 'Altered' is the operative word for one's behavior when on stims! 😅 Thanks for sharing.
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u/potato-taco 1d ago
I have known of multiple entomologists at Florida universities who have been called on by members of the public to check their homes for infestations, only to find nothing. One brought over a graduate student and a microscope and scoured a friend's apartment, finding nothing. Another has seen an uptick in cases recently. He joked, "It can be triggered in part by stress; I can't imagine why everyone has been so stressed out over the past couple of months." Of course, as entomologists, we can't diagnose anything, we can only say, "Well, it isn't bugs."
As an aside, while I generally believe in descriptive naming, I think "Ekbom's Syndrome," after a neurologist who described delusional parasitosis in the 1930's, is a far more compassionate moniker.
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u/canvanman69 1d ago
We have newer tools for diagnosis these days.
It'd be very interesting to take these sorts of cases and determine what antibodies are present in their body for all the viruses that we're aware of.
Epstein-Barr virus infections or other herpes infections that hide from your immune system by stashing themselves away in your nervous system would be an interesting place to start.
Seemingly psychosomatic itching could very well be caused by any number of herpes virus that are infecting your nervous system and/or being attacked or destroyed in place by your immune cells when they're detected.
Like MS, where your immune system gets rid of the virus but still thinks your nervous system is a threat and keeps attacking it indefinitely.
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u/inkfade 23h ago
The first ophthalmology clinic I worked at, this guy kept coming in because he thought there were parasites in his eyes. Each time he came in, he would say that the infestation was getting worse and he couldn't see and he could feel them moving in his eyes.
He would send up-close videos of his eyes to the triage nurse and point out the parasites "moving," which really was just light reflecting on his eyeball. The last time I saw him, he was freaked out and saying that he had infected his family with the parasites and he could see them moving in his wife and two childrens' eyes.
The doctor never referred him to psychiatry. :/
AND THEN. One of the optometrists I used to work for (at a separate job) said during residency she had a patient who actually did have a worm floating around in their eye. He had visited Africa some time before that, which is where he must have gotten it she said.
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u/vamoosedmoose 1d ago
I started to get this somewhat. Being constantly wet from my dishwashing job caused a couple patches of the athletes foot fungus to appear on my legs. Even after it was cured I was convinced that any redness or itching I got was the fungus returning. I learned about this condition and realized I was slipping into it. It took some work to convince myself that I was healthy. It’s hard to believe doctors sometimes when you’ve seen as much malpractice as I have.
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u/MountainZombie 1d ago
I’m in a similar park. Long time ago, long story short, an ex had an affair (and presumably there) got crabs. I went crazy. I cleaned everything to get rid of them, followed the treatment, but they came back (because he didn’t do his part!). So after a while, there was no ex anymore, no more crabs, I was in full health, but during a heavy depressive episodes I started feeling them back. Doctors told me I was imagining it. I was. It was a horrible experience , but the depression treatment helped and the “crabs” were gone. Now every item I itch I get this fucking feeling im slipping back into madness.
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u/auggie235 1d ago
My mom used to rent out a room to an eccentric older woman with many health issues. She would regularly hold up her arm to us to show us "the worms" she felt crawling under her skin. She would also have very loud conversations in the middle of the night with nobody. I have SO MANY stories about her. She survived the sinking of the Andrea Doria, worked as an interior architect for the mob in Staten Island, and allegedly shot a man, telling me "gun in one hand new born baby in the other, I SHOT HIM"
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u/blueiron0 1d ago
My mom went through this with bugs. Seeing bugs literally everywhere. Thought everyone was bringing bugs into her house. She would follow people around with a napkin and pick up the "bugs" they dropped.
It is seriously a hellacious way to live. She's mostly recovered now though.
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u/Normal_Banana_2314 23h ago
I'm sorry your mom went through something like that. How did she recover, if you dont mind me asking? Is something like this triggered by stress?
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u/blueiron0 23h ago
She basically had a mental break after my dad died. There was drug use involved too. She was at the point where she cut everyone out of her life who wouldn't agree to seeing the invisible bugs.
We went through hell with it tbh. It was bugs, microscopic fungus, spores, mold. It cycled through a lot of things.. I think she was having a reaction or auto immune disease going on with her skin. We fought about it a lot tbh since I refused to lie to her.
TBH it was just a time thing. After trying literally every treatment, including ivermectin OFC, and multiple dermatologists, she eventually had to admit maybe there was something else going on.
We went through this for like 4-5 years before she started living normally again. I wouldn't say she's 100% better, but it's no longer running her life. She can function normally now.
Prednisone was the one thing that helped a lot.
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u/Normal_Banana_2314 23h ago
That sounds hellish, as if the grief wasn't enough. I'm glad she's doing at least a little better. Thanks for sharing.
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u/ScaleDr 23h ago
I’m a vet. People with this condition also become convinced their pets have external parasites, the same ones “affecting” them. I’ve seen multiple clients with psychiatric disorders and sometimes their pets are wrapped up in the delusions. Sad all around. Pets are usually fine, just feel bad for the people.
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u/pownloc 21h ago
I heard a podcast about the Habsburg dynasty a few days ago. Lots of them were nuts and all inbred to a certain degree. The one that stands out to me, in relation to this post, was a young woman in the family who was tormented by the delusion that a full sized, glass grand piano was physically imbedded in her abdomen. She apparently felt that even the slightest of movements could shatter the piano and shred her to pieces from the inside. I have no idea whether or not this is rooted in the same psychosis but felt to me to be similar in several ways.
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u/licecrispies 1d ago
I had a friend who went through it due to cocaine psychosis. At first she thought her pimples were bugs coming out of her skin. She got super pissed off when she called a dentist to say that she had worms coming out of her gums and he laughed at her and hung up.
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u/spoopyboiman 20h ago
My friend experiences this from time to time. She has a lot of health problems, her nervous system is a wreck, and she’s got a lot of mental health disorders. She told me that it starts by knowing she doesn’t have bugs under her skin - but… it feels like things are crawling under there (in her case, she had an undiagnosed vitamin deficiency that caused a tingly/crawling sensation). She could viscerally describe the sensation of them squirming in her body. And after days/weeks/months of that feeling, she said your brain searches for bugs in things (just in case). And then you see mucus in your stool. Or a wiggly vein. A burst blood vessel. And suddenly you can’t stop thinking about all these symptoms - how they might be connected and how they /could/ be bugs, so you should treat this like that just in case.
So you buy the “anti parasitic” cleanse. When that doesn’t work, you coat every inch of your home in diatomaceous earth and you see a doctor who doesn’t help. You spiral. You dig through your stool and your brain tells you that all the fiber and mucus is worms. You double down on the cleanse. You double down on the diatomaceous earth. The dust makes it hard to breathe, and now it feels like bugs are clogging up your lungs. You vape diatomaceous earth. You start cutting and digging into your skin to remove the worms.
It can get really concerning really quickly, but it can be addressed early (before the concerning bit) if we have more empathy and awareness in healthcare. Check in on your friends and advocate for them when necessary. We have to take care of each other.
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u/ALoudMeow 1d ago
So that’s what those “morgolian victims” have.
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u/Emily__Lyn 1d ago
Morgellons disease is kind of like delusional parasitosis' sister. It's the belief that there are small fibers embedded in the human skin that form lesions
It's similar in that people will often bring samples of these fibers that only turn out to be synthetic or animal fibers.
It's similar to delusional parasitosis, but they do not think it's living insects.
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u/we_are_devo 1d ago
It's the same condition manifesting with slightly different delusions, in the same way that it's not a different type of schizophrenia when people think the Chinese government is trying to mind control them rather than the CIA. The specific difference in the form of delusion isn't really significant
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u/Emily__Lyn 1d ago
Morgellons is a sub type of delusional parasitosis, but it shares marked differences between typical presentations.
For example, one can have delusions about where and what types of parasites have, like pooping worms, having something in the ear, having mites on the skin or hair. Morgellons is different than typical delusional parasitosis because the perceived foreign object it not alive, but yes, it is still under the category of delusional parasitosis.
The purpose of my comment was to explain the difference between morgellons and typical presentation as stated in the original post.
As the article linked above says
"Morgellons disease is a related constellation of symptoms"
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u/Chaotic-Entropy 1d ago
I mean... microbes aren't so much delusion as just something you have to accept.
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u/Ducking_over_it 21h ago
Hey I’ve seen this! I had a patient with clear Lewy body dementia that had a long standing delusion of being infested with liver flukes. He went so far as to shit in a bucket to avoid contaminating the water supply (even though he disposed of it in the toilet later), rubbing bleach all over his body, and setting his couch on fire to rid it of the bugs. He also had vivid visual hallucinations of the bugs crawling on him. One of the saddest and most impaired cases I’ve ever seen.
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u/fishebake 20h ago
We come across this a lot in dermatology. Even when the provider can tell that there’s nothing there, the patient is just scratching, we still biopsy and send it off to pathology to be 100% sure.
9 times out of ten it comes back as “excoriation”, often with ulceration. Aka “you’re scratching so much you’re gouging your skin to bits”.
Most patients don’t like to hear this for some reason.
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u/Hirogen_ 16h ago
hmm you have a few hundred trillion bacteria in your gut… so everybody is overrun all the time, some suggest those bacteria control you
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u/Fantasmic03 13h ago
I've had a few patients with it. My most memorable was a woman who turned up to an appointment with a bucket half filled with her shit from the past 2 days. She wanted me to inspect it for roaches and maggots. That was an easy admission.
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u/LegitimateLagomorph 8h ago
Had a patient misdiagnosed by ID as this.
He had parasites. We had to put him in a quarantined room for four weeks. Never let the ID guys live that down.
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u/_iamacat 1d ago
Genuinely have to step away from this line of thinking sometimes, even though I'm carrying Lyme, some sort of RMSF and my weakness to fungus. I've had several yeast infections, foot fungus, and ringworm in the past year lmao.
The horrors are in my body! I'm not crazy! I'm not crazyyyyy! as I'm dragged away...
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u/bobdob123usa 1d ago
I have an acquaintance with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons
Or at least, that is what they claim. And yeah, really hard to take them seriously about anything because of it.
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u/kafm73 19h ago
The somewhat new thinking regarding Morgellons is that is is a reaction to a Borrelia infection (like Lyme disease; caused by a tick bite). They’ve found that some sufferers of Morgellons have also been infected at some point previously with Lyme disease. One medical report shows that treatment of the infection led to a complete remission of symptoms of Morgellons. I thought this new information was pretty interesting.
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u/pacificat 1d ago
I work with someone in a caretaking role who I believe has this condition. They constantly pick at their skin and state worms or bugs are in there. I don't work with them much but redirection helps and keeping their hands busy with stress balls, crafts, etc
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u/jo_nigiri 23h ago
My friend has this! I've actually had 2 friends with this. First one feels parasites around his throat and inside his body, the second feels bugs crawling on his skin
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u/yay855 17h ago
I have psychosis myself, and occasionally experience that sort of full-body itching sensation that feels like you're being bitten by bugs all over. But the thing is, that usually happens when I'm having a psychotic attack and break out in hives or get a rash at the same time. TBH the body works in weird fucking ways and it's really fucking easy for your nervous system and paranoia to create a feedback loop of the placebo effect, but in a negative way.
Something happens that stresses you out a lot and you start to itch or feel strange sensations from hives, but unless you deal with that sort of thing a lot, you won't realize what's really happening. So you assume that it's some sort of parasite and try to get rid of it or see a doctor, only to be told nothing is there... which isn't actually solving the problem, so you just get more and more stressed about it, making the sensations worse.
Meeting people where they're at is essential for actually medically treating people. Even if the thing they think is wrong isn't really the problem, they're still experiencing symptoms and it's a doctor's job to treat them. Whether it's delusion or just something they didn't check for, it's the job of every doctor to actually help their patients; tossing them out the door without actually addressing the problem will just make them keep suffering, or even make it worse.
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u/FishAndRiceKeks 13h ago
When I was really young and really dumb I watched a video about bot flies and convinced myself that a stretch mark on my hip was a bot fly. I think I put yogurt on my hip or something trying to mimic how they made them come out of the skin so they could remove them. Nothing came out.
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u/Suitepotatoe 6h ago
But watch out for bird mites. They are small and infest and will have doctors convinced you don’t have anything when you actually mite
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u/MikGusta 2h ago
I’ve heard of someone that thought their body was infested by nanobots. Or was that in a movie?
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u/Bashamo257 1d ago
I can hear Oyashiro-sama's footsteps following me, ever since I left Hinamizawa.
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u/JustYerAverage 1d ago
So, are all the micro-plastics real or not?
This is getting confusing.
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u/situation_room 1d ago
Yes microplastics are real, but they are too small to be seen with the human eye. This post is about a paranoid delusion regarding insect infestation.
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u/Spiley_spile 1d ago
Is it a delusion if it's true 🤔
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u/KrimxonRath 1d ago
If you think about it—it’s kind of like our nerves are snaking through our muscle and flesh as if they were roots or worms through dirt.
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u/Spiley_spile 1d ago
I mean more like all the the symbiota. Our bodies are a biosphere with an echo system with more than 1 resident. Our mitochondria has its own DNA. We have a ton of bacteria, etc.
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u/KrimxonRath 1d ago
People aren’t think about their gut biomes though. These ailments often involve the infestation being under the skin, in the muscle, etc. Exactly where our nerves are. Coincidence? Nah. Big Nerve has put a veil over your eyes.
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u/canvanman69 1d ago
The bugs could very well be in the nervous system itself.
Just much, much smaller than we think to check for. Herpes virus hides from your immune system by stealthily stashing itself in your nervous system.
A benign itch that eventually goes away could develop into multiple sclerosis in the rare cases where your immune system begins to attack itself by binding to both the Epstein-Barr virus but also binding to neuronal receptors too.
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u/honkymotherfucker1 1d ago
I had this not too long ago. Absolutely obsessed I was infested with tapeworms or something. I had panic attacks and everything.
Weirdly, my cousin who is a diagnosed schizophrenic has started a fuckin 4chan supplement plan because Western meat hygiene causes us to have tons of parasites that the government don’t want us to know about.
So, there’s some anecdotal evidence of it.
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u/AcanthocephalaLost61 17h ago
I mean, doctors also missed 7 diseases I was born with. At a certain point just trusting other doctors isn't the best way to go about things. See any research on high voltage electric shock treatment, that was torture and didn't change until sooner than you realize. Don't do this stuff to people who are stuck in the medical system. It's a form of oppression. Literally everyone goes ignorance is bliss about how poorly our medical system even operates... not even beginning on why the doctor would want you to not be sick? They don't get paid to hide problems, but a lot of them sure do that. Wait until it's your turn and it's already too late.
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u/Cantras 1d ago
There's an "ask a doctor" syndicated column, Dr. Roach, where people, overwhelmingly old people, write in dear-abby style with their medical details and a "do I need a second opinion" or "is there a better option than this drug" or "why this and this"...
And someone wrote in telling him she was desperate, nobody would believe her about the parasites, she's not on drugs but she'd been to so many doctors and they all said she was crazy, she'd tried ivermectin and various poisons trying to get them out, please help.
Dr Roach, and I'm imagining his writing like he's speaking in a very calm and patient tone, recommended a specific antipsychotic and clarified that he wasn't saying she was crazy: But some things are prescribed off-label for other things, such as a lot of anti-anxiety meds being prescribed for chronic pain and vice-versa, and this particular drug was also good for recalcitrant parasitic infections.
And I thought that was kindof sweet? kind? trying to meet her where she was at.