Fregoli's delusion

Fregoli's delusion was named after an Italian actor who was famous for his incredible ability to impersonate other people and change roles quickly. It is a very rare delusional disorder. Delusions are false beliefs that result from a misinterpretation of reality. The sick person's judgments are completely resistant to any arguments and evidence pointing to their falsehood. Delusions are very diverse in content. The area of the content they concern is practically unlimited. Often, they are persecutory, hypochondriacal or grandiose delusions, they can also be associated with jealousy, expressing the belief that one's own body is distorted or rotting. However, in Fregoli's Syndrome, the patient recognizes a person close to him in many people, thinking that they change their faces like actors. For example, an uncle plays the role of a neighbor, a postman, a policeman ... If a sick person sees the same person practically everywhere, he tries to explain it somehow. Tracking is quite logical, so often this close person is considered a stalker. The symptoms of Fregoli's disorder include: misinterpretation of people, persecutory delusions, aggression, anxiety, fear, suspicion, decreased motivation to act, and maladjusted affect, i.e. external expression of emotions, e.g. a sad expression on the face and tone of voice when the patient tells about happy moments or loved ones. The main cause of the syndrome is neurological disorders. It may occur as a result of some diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dementia syndrome such as Alzheimer's disease, head injuries, other organic disorders, as well as epilepsy, pituitary tumor and AIDS. The mainstay of treatment for this syndrome is the treatment of the underlying disease, as a result of which this type of delusion has developed. Most often, therefore, it is the treatment of paranoid schizophrenia with antipsychotic drugs.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12108

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crips/2011/351824/