Mom’s 15-Year Mutual Psychosis: A Mountain of Madness
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-link-name=”in body link”>Two madness.” She chuckled a little, then sighed. “It’s a real diagnosis. but ridiculously rare.”
“I think I’ve heard of it.” I knew from my French that it meant “madness of two”.
“According to dianna, Mark and I are nuts and I need to get off the mountain. She told me” – and here Mom paused for a beat – “‘One day you will die from this.'”
I took that in, my chest tight. It felt like Dianna had reduced all of my fears into one, blunt sentence – the one I could never bring myself to say to my mother.
“Wow.” I took a deep breath. “She’s vrey smart,you no. And experienced. What do you think of what she said?”
“Well again, it was a bit dramatic. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Are you going to tell Mark?”
“Probably.”
That night after she went to bed, I spent hours researching folie à deux. I was sucked into a twilight world of deadly codependency that leads to insanity, suicide, murder. I learned that folie à deux is an indeed rare but actual diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), where it is indeed referred to as “Shared Psychotic Disorder”, in which one person develops delusions that mirror another person’s delusions due to a close, long-term relationship. Like a marriage. (If three people share the delusion, it’s a folie à trois.)
other factors include financial challenges, and it is highly correlated with people who are isolated outsiders. I felt an odd mix of sorrowful vindication: this was what had been happening to them for decades.Then,reading further,I locked on to one of the four subtypes of this disorder: madness induced (imposed psychosis). Unlike madness simultaneous (simultaneous psychosis), where both people are equally delusional, with madness inducedone patient takes on another’s delusion.
A flood of memories enveloped me, of Mom defending Mark’s dreams, of her insisting that most people just will not admit that they envy the freedom she and mark have. That their lives are wondrous and worth the deprivation and sacrifice. That Mark was very wise and knowledgeable.
I searched for treatment – how are these people helped? One line crushed me: “