ABSTRACT
Back ground : deluesions may be difiened as false an shakeable beliefs of morbid orgins . their chareteristics include :
1- non-acceptance by people of the same soical , religions, educational and back graunds .
2- The absolute conviction with which they are held and their incorrigibility by experiense or argument .
3- their content are oflen , though not always absurd or impossible
Objectives : to Identify types and frequency of delusions in group of iraqi patients with schizophreniform disorder and chronic schizophrenia.
Methods : this is cross sectional of study that enrolled 120 patient sixty schizophreniform patients ( acut schizophrenia) from Al- Diwaynia teaching hospital and sixty chronic schizophrenic patients from AL-Rshad mental hospital
During period from 1 Jun 2008 to 1st Aug 2008 the patients was diagnosed as schizophreniform psychosis or chronic schizophrenia by
Consultant psychiatrist and was confirmed by criteria of structural clinical interview for the diagnostic and statisical manual of mental disorder text revision(DSM – I V – TR ) appendix -11- they were selected consecutively by taking evry patient who fulfilled the diagnostic criteria
Result : this study revealed that the freguency of delusions among schizophreniform group of patients were segnificantly highter then among the chronic schizophrenic ones . and highly segnificant correlation between delusions and education level was found the higher the educational level the more frequent were the delusions
There was no - signficont association between delusions and some other sociodemographic factors
Conclusions : this study proved that schizophrenform psychosis is presented with high rate of delusions of all types and in particular persecutory delusions and delusions of reference and chronic schizophrenic patients in frequenay had experiensed delusions when compeny . with schizophrenform patients .
INTRODUCTION
DEFINITION OF DELUSIONS:
Delusions may be defined as false unshakeable beliefs of morbid origins. Their characteristics include:
a) Non-acceptance by people of the same social, religious, educational and backgrounds.
b) The absolute conviction with which they are held and their incorrigibility by experience or argument.
c) Their contents are often, though not always absurd or impossible.(3)
CLASSIFICATION of DELUSIONS:
Delusions can be classified as:
a) Primary delusions, also known as apophanous delusions, delusions proper or true delusions. They are the result of a primary delusional experience which cannot be deduced from any other morbid phenomenon. The essence of primary delusional experience is that a new meaning arises in connection with some other psychological event.(1)
1
Fish (1967b) has linked them to t