55. What is the disorder in which patients believe that they turn into wolves?
From Quiz A Trivia Challenge for Quick Minds & Fast Fingers
Answer:
lycanthropy
Also called lycomania, clinical lycanthropy is actually a rare psychiatric disorder. It is one possible expression of zoanthropy, any disorder in which patients imagine they transform into any sort of animal, not necessarily a wolf. In Japan, for example, foxes and dogs are a more common delusion than wolves. A patient may believe she has been an animal in the past (and may become again), or the patient may behave in the presence of observers like an animal, by growling, crawling, howling, etc.
In the journal 'Psychopoathology', a clinician described the 1989 case study of person who reported to change from human to canine, to a horse, and then finally to cat, before changing back into a human. Treatment of clinical lycanthropy or zoanthropy includes using antipsychotic medication and mood-stabilizing medication, preferably integrated with approaches that address social and cultural factors that obviously affect the content of the delusion. A 2021 article in the journal "Frontiers in Psychiatry" suggested a possible connection between the delusion and immersion into digital media (social networks, video games, TV series) among adolescent patients.