More On Morgellons Disease Delusion

Although the article I linked earlier hinted the condition might be completely psychiatric in nature -- a simple case of delusion -- it seemed to give credence to the idea of a genuine Morgellons Disease. I should have underscored the fact that this seems to be a delusion.

Here's a blog is dedicated to debunking the idea of a real physical malady.

This page is set up by what seems to be a Morgellons disease sufferer, and strives to prove her skin is bursting with tiny mulicolored fibers.

She has pictures. Of fibers. Fibers that could be deposited on the skin by a parasitic creature called a "sweater" (or "jumper," if you're from the UK).

It's strange. She reports these as pictures of her "delusions," but seems to think they depict something real (i.e., real "burrows" in her skin from parasites, real fibers growing out of her skin). I don't know if she means the word "delusions" to be meant sarcastically.

Which is a big schizophrenic-type thing. The frustration at constantly being told what you believe is just a hallucination results in this sarcastic way of talking and writing in which everything is in "quotes" (actual or implied) to show "doubts" about "everything."

It hardly needs to be noted that the fact that many people report the same sort of malady is hardly evidence it's real. Schizophrenics' delusions tend to mimic each other's with uncanny accuracy. Maybe it's the same observations being interpreted the same way, or maybe they just hear things from each other.

And this just seems to be a minor variation of the "bugs, bugs, bugs! crawling over my skin!" hallucination.

I really think it's odd that someone would bother taking high-magnification pictures of her own skin, unless she was a schizophrenic or at least hypochndriac. Why go looking if you're not determined to find something?

And if you do go looking at your skin under a microscope-- well, you know, how do you know if what you see isn't normal? What's skin supposed to look like at 20x, anyway?

Weird stuff.

Thanks to madneo and apoethesis.

posted by Ace at 04:40 PM

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