Original artwork description:

Folie à deux ('madness [shared] by two'), also known as shared psychosis[2] or shared delusional disorder (SDD), is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations,[3][4] are transmitted from one individual to another.[5] The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à... trois ('three') or quatre ('four'); and further, folie en famille ('family madness') or even folie à plusieurs ('madness of several').

The disorder was first conceptualized in 19th-century French psychiatry by Charles Lasègue and Jules Falret and is also known as Lasègue–Falret syndrome.[3][6]

Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder (DSM-4 – 297.3) and induced delusional disorder (ICD-10 – F24), although the research literature largely uses the original name.

This disorder is not in the current DSM (DSM-5), which considers the criteria to be insufficient or inadequate. DSM-5 does not consider Shared Psychotic Disorder (Folie à Deux) as a separate entity, but rather, the physician should classify it as “Delusional Disorder” or in the “Other Specified Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorder”.

Materials used:

Oil on canvas

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