Mental Health

'Zombies' Or Patients Of Cotard's Syndrome Believe They Are Dead

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Nov 05, 2015 11:04 AM EST

Currently, the nation is quite taken up with zombies, or "walking dead", who are sailing through movies, TV and related shows. However, some people have taken it further. They really believe that they are the "walking dead", according to HNGN.

Now this is quite a strange syndrome, and was first dealt with by a French neurologist, Cotard, after whom it is named, as 'Cotard's syndrome'. This refers to people's delusions that they are the walking dead. His first patient was a female who believed that she was not living.

Another person who believed that she was a zombie was author Esmé Weijun Wang. In November 2013, she felt that she had died a month before! She had fainted on a flight from London to San Francisco, and decided that she had died in the plane, reports The Washington Post.

"I was convinced that I had died on that flight, and I was in the afterlife and hadn't realized it until that moment. That was the beginning of when I was convinced that I was dead. But I wasn't upset about it, because I thought that I could do things in my life over and do them better," she said.

She even believed that she was sharing her life after death with her husband and dog Daphne, as she was interacting with them!

Dr. Michael Birnbaum, director of North Shore-LIJ Health System's Early Treatment Program, said that 'zombies' who are under their strange belief face danger.

"Any delusion can be incredibly dangerous depending on how it impacts your life," Birnbaum said. "Someone who believes they're already dead may not take the necessary steps in their daily life - to shower, get out of bed, go to work, go to school or have healthy relationships and friendships. None of those things matter if you're already dead."

Fortunately, Wang could overcome her delusion, yet she still feels fatigued, weak and insomniac, along with pains in her joints. However, these for her are trifling, compared to her despair when she was convinced that she was a "rotting corpse."

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