7 Scariest Mental Illnesses

1. Cotard Illusion. People with this rare mental illness hold the delusional belief that they are dead or do not exist or are in the process of rotting. While denying their own existence, over half the people with this condition also believe that they are immortal. Being locked in a world where you’re both dying and living forever is some deeply disturbing shit that would probably take a whole team of Viennese psychiatrists to unfurl.

2. Visual Agnosia. This condition is marked by the inability to process visual information. Often that manifests in the inability to recognize common objects, like trees, clothes, or cars. Existing in a world where you can’t calibrate the danger or usefulness of everyday objects sounds like a recipe for misery.

3. Aboulomania is the absolute inability to make a decision. This goes far beyond deciding whether to wear ankle boots or slingbacks; the person actually becomes paralysed with indecision sometimes to the point of catatonia.

4. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. Its name is cute but its symptoms are not. Alice in Wonderland affects the perception, seeming to shrink the person down to a Lilliputian one moment and then a giant the next.

5. Autophagia is the state of failing to resist an impulse to hurt oneself or others. The majority of those who are in this state will feel tension before the act, then relief and pleasure when it is done. The act most often associated with this condition is eating yourself. At this point, you’re probably thinking that’s enough internet for the day.

6. Capgras Delusion. The souls afflicted with this condition believe that a friend, spouse or other confidant has actually been replaced with an identical imposter. It’s got to be a completely soul-grinding to believe that your loved ones are fakes; you’d trust nobody, you’d start to wonder, at some point, if you yourself were also a duplicate.

7. Reduplicative paramnesia is the belief that a place has been duplicated or that it exists in two different places at the same time. This is likely to leave sufferers feeling utterly upended and disoriented, without knowing which place is real and which is the delusion.