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.

[u/1998199888]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_parasitosis

[u/ninjagorilla]

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

[u/softshellcrab69 → u/ninjagorilla]

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 :(