My name is Magdalena Antrobus, I am a PhD student working on Project PERFECT, researching psychological and epistemic benefits of depression. Together with Lisa Bortolotti I wrote a paper entitled Depressive Delusions , exploring the nature of delusions in severe forms of depression as well as the process of their formation. Here we present a summary of the article, which was published in 2016 in the Filosofia Unisinos journal. It is common to define delusions as implausible beliefs that are held with conviction but for which there is little empirical support. The vast majority of delusions appearing in severe depression are mood-congruent, which means that their content matches the mood experienced by the person ( Hales and Yudofsky, 2003 ). Common themes of depressive delusions are persecution, guilt, punishment, personal inadequacy, or disease, with half of the affected people experiencing delusions with more than one theme. Stanghellini and Raballo (2015) point to several d...
A blog at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health