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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV1228

Psychotic Grief

PSYCHOTIC GRIEF

Traumatic grief can trigger brief psychotic disorder in a person with no psychiatric history, and an atypical antipsychotic combined with social support can lead to full recovery.

The aim of this presentation is to describe the case of a 57-year-old woman with no previous psychiatric history who developed an acute psychotic episode following her husband's death from rapidly progressive cancer over approximately six months. Her responsibility for caring for a young child added dimensions of vulnerability and parental responsibility to the clinical picture. Assessment was based on a clinical psychiatric interview; brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed no structural or vascular pathology, and laboratory tests and serology were normal. The clinical presentation included persecutory delusions involving malicious intent, centered on a neighbor, and derogatory auditory hallucinations addressing her in the second person; the content of the hallucinations was threatening and focused on the theme of losing custody of her child. The absence of a mood disorder was notable; the patient did not meet the criteria for a depressive episode, and her symptoms remained confined to psychosis and paranoid distress. By the sixth week of treatment with an atypical antipsychotic, the auditory hallucinations had completely resolved, the persecutory delusion had markedly diminished, her sleep pattern had been restored, and she had fully regained her functioning as a mother; the clinical focus shifted from managing psychosis to supportive psychotherapy addressing the grieving process. The authors note that traumatic grief can trigger brief psychotic disorder even in the absence of a psychiatric history, that normal neuroimaging and laboratory findings are necessary to confirm a functional etiology in late-onset cases, and that an atypical antipsychotic combined with social support enabled the patient to move from a psychotic defense to a healthy grieving process.

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