The Zombie phenomenon appears in popular culture in many different ways, from fiction stories
to voodoo rituals.
Even psychology has had to deal with them, facing a estrange mental illness.
The Cotárd’s syndrome, or Walking Dead Syndrome.
It’s one of the rarest illnesses known out there.
In most of cases, people affected by it think they lack a part of their body, an arm, a
leg, the nose… or they simply deny their existence.
But in the most severe cases, people suffer from deliriums of denial that make them believe
they are really dead - their body doesn’t work any more and they are just walking dead.
Or they also feel they simply dont exist and what they see around them is a figment of
their imagination.
They feel their internal organs, heart, intestines… have permanently stopped working.
Or they just dont have them, nor blood or a brain.
They can even feel they are rotting inside, being able to smell their own flesh decomposing
and feel the worms sliding underneath their skin.
Sometimes, patients are so convinced they are already dead that they think they are
immune and nothing can hurt them and they cant feel pain, as if they were lost souls.
In those cases, they can even hurt themselves and risk their physical integrity.
The first case with similar symptoms was documented by Charles Bonnet, a Swiss biologist, in 1788.
It was an old lady who had suffered a paralysis attack.
When she was able to talk again, she told her family she was already dead, and asked
them to have a funeral for her.
She insisted so much, that her family had to accept and put her inside a coffin, tho
her delirium ended up disappearing as the days went by.
But it was the french neurologist Jules Cotard who discovered this syndrome and named it.
In 1880, he presented in a conference in Paris the case of a woman, whom he called “Mademoiselle
X”, who stated she didnt have a brain, nerves, stomach or intestine.
She believed she was eternal and she’d lived forever, and since she didnt have guts, she
didnt have the need to eat.
Doctors didnt know how to treat her, and she ended up dying of starvation.
The Cotard’s syndrome is related to many causes like severe depressions, psychosis
or schizophrenia.
It’s also associated with the Capgras’ syndrome, which affects our capacity to identify
people, believing they are doubles or impostors.
It can also appear as a consequence of injuries that have affected certain parts of the brain,
like the parietal (paráietal) lobe.
It is always related to the section of the mind that control the recognition of faces
and of our environment, and the emotions they make us feel.
Patients believe they are no longer in the world of the living, since they are incapable
of associating memories or feelings with what’s around them.
Unfortunately, no effective treatment has been found yet.
Doctors usually prescribe antidepressants and electroconvulsive shock therapy.
Another effect it produces is absolute isolation from their environment and human relations
- psychologists try to ease this with therapy so patients can have their personal and social
life back.
In the present, there are still cases of Cotard’s syndrome all around the world.
In 1996 in Scotland, a man suffered an accident with his motorbike which led to injuries on
his head.
After getting his medical discharge, his mother moved to Southafrica with him.
The man was convinced he had died during his time at the hospital, and the spirit of his
mom had guided him to Hell, because it could only get that hot there.
In 2003, some greek psychiatric (saikiátric) treated a patient who believed his head was
empty.
He stated he had been born without a brain and that was why he had an intellectual development
disorder.
He tried to kill himself in more than one occasion, saying it wasnt worth living like
that.
In Colombia, the case of a woman was registered some years ago.
She had a long medical record of depression.
One day, she saw smoke coming out of her mouth, and she associated it with her soul leaving
her body.
She looked at herself in the mirror and saw her eyes were empty, with no life.
She felt the smells of her body, rotting, and the tickle of worms eating her up from
the inside.
She thought she had become a zombie as a divine punishment for having tried to take her life
away.
The Cotard’s syndrome is one of the most mysterious illnesses known out there.
Its origin gets lost in the deepest of our thoughts.
And it turns the life of the person suffering it in a complete nightmare.