5 of the Strangest Mental Disorders

Everything in your life is kept locked in your brain, this organ that is fragile and kept locked up behind your skull. This little thing can have things go wrong with it all the time.

But, this is quite different than having a bad kidney or liver, having something wrong with your brain can have some strange consequences. So, if you take your daily life for granted, such as being able to recognize your mother's face, is suddenly gone and you are left with a disorder than is way too strange to comprehend.

Walking Corpse Syndrome

So, here's a couple quick questions... Are you dead? Have you ever been dead? If you happened to answer no to this, well, then you're lucky. But, if you have answered yes, you may have Cotard's Syndrome, or better as it is better known, Walking Corpse Syndrome.

People who have Cotard's Syndrome believe that they have died or have happened to have been mutilated in some improbable manner, such as having all of their blood drained or their organs have been removed. Yet, some other patients have shown delusions of immortality.

This condition is most common with those who suffer from schizophrenia, those who have suffered head trauma. And, in a more famous case,

Fregoli Delusion

So, you love meeting new people everyday, then you accuse them of impersonating your loved ones and following you. You may have Fregoli delusion. Those who have this disorder are irrationally convinced that strangers are taking the place of their friends and family members and have developed a disguise that looks like the faces they have known all their lives.

Some researchers just say that it's really weird, and even speculate that the condition may have a basis in an organic brain disease, they also said that it is dominant psychotic theme that determines the content of the syndrome. This is basically how scientists avoid using the word "crazy."

Cannibal Disease

If you have played Until Dawn, you may have heard of the Wendigo... Well, there is a real condition, called Wendigo psychosis, this causes the sufferer to have an all-but-irresistible craving for human flesh.

Wendigo is a culture-specific disorder that strikes populations of Northern Algonquin people, in the Great Lakes region.

In these cultures, a Wendigo is a supernatural creature that has a taste for human flesh. Symptoms of Wendigo psychosis usually behind in the winter as an exaggerated form of cabin fever and involves loss of appetite, nausea, and vomiting. And when the victim believes that they have become a Wendigo, they will crave human flesh and sometimes will even attempt suicide to prevent them from infecting others.

The first written account of the disorder was in 1722, and the number of cases since this time have been so small that some researchers even suggest that the disorder is more of a myth.

Aboulomania

Your brain is equipped with a mechanism that helps you sift through actions and helps prioritize the things that you want to do. Aboulomania is something that happens when this mechanism is disabled or defective.

Those who suffer from aboulomania have reported being paralyzed with indecision over every minor decision they are faced with. Daily activities, like going for a walk, getting work done, or other menial tasks, become impossible to prioritize.

What is also interesting about this disorder is that the person that suffers from it is otherwise completely normal. They know that they have an issue with pathological indecision, yet they will still agonize at length over every little thing.

Treatment for those with the disorder consist of ruling out depression and then encouraging them to just stop already... Clinical research is no doubt hampered by the difficulty in scheduling appointments with these patients.

Stendhal Syndrome

Imagine you are surrounded by fine art, or an emotionally powerful surroundings, and suddenly you have a racing pulse, fainting, and hallucinations. Well, then you have Stendhal Syndrome. This condition is trigged by different stimuli in different people and it tends to strike in specific places:

• Jerusalem syndrome affects religious people who visit the Holy Land. Jerusalem police and medical professionals have procedures for coping with those tourists that all of the sudden go off the rails and start to proclaim themselves as the Messiah or those who trespass on holy sites and start to preach to crowds.
• Florence syndrome is the Stendhal subset that Marie-Henri Beyle, French author, or Stendhal, himself, dealt with. The close proximity to the artist overwhelmed him, he later wrote that his visit Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy, left him with a fluttering heart and vertigo. And hundreds of people have responded in a similar manner.
• Paris syndrome may be the strangest of them all. It only affects Japanese people who visit Paris. It seems to be triggered by the gigantic letdown of Paris, opposed to their expectations. Paris syndrome tends to involve some sort of emotional breakdown or acute psychosis. The Japanese embassy maintains a hotline for suffers.