Delusions

Delusional disorder is a psychotic disorder where people experience delusions very frequently, which leads to the person having difficulty telling the difference between reality and false, or imagined, beliefs. 

Usually, delusions experienced by people with delusional disorder are not entirely unrealistic, but they are not true. This means that the delusions are based on things that could happen in real life but are not currently happening. Sometimes, delusions might be originally based on true events which have been exaggerated, meaning that the person’s beliefs are telling them that things were much worse than what actually happened.

There are different types of delusions, such as:

• Body related delusions – where someone believes that they have a medical problem or that something is physically wrong with their body

• Jealous delusions – where someone believes that a romantic partner is cheating on them, or that a close friend or family member is talking bad about them when they are not there

• Grandiose delusions (sometimes called ‘delusions of grandeur’) – where someone believes that they are, for example, extremely gifted or famous, when in fact this is not true. Sometimes people with grandiose delusions think that they have very important knowledge about things that nobody else knows about

There are other symptoms that people with delusional disorder might experience, including:

• Low mood – feeling sad, hopeless or fed up often

• Social isolation – losing contact with other people and spending a lot of time alone. This might happen when a person is experiencing more intense delusions

• Irritability – becoming angry quicker than usual or about things that usually would not make the person feel angry

• Hallucinations – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling something that is not real