Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology

Stalking in an erotomanic patient diagnosed as resistant depression: a case report

Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology 2014; 24: Supplement S165-S165
Read: 2008 Published: 18 February 2021

Erotomania (also known as De Clerambault’s syndrome) is usually described as a rare delusional syndrome that characteristically involves a woman, who believes that a man, typically of higher social, economic or political status, is in love with her. Stalking, which has been given the clinical term ‘‘obsessional following’’, is repetitive threatening or harassing behavior that creates a fear of harm in the victim. In this article we aimed to present a case of erotomania, who stalked her doctor and was diagnosed as resistant depression. A 46 years old, female, married, housewife was admitted to our psychiatric outpatient clinic. She had the symptoms of depressed mood, irritability, loss of interest, insomnia, psychomotor retardation. She was diagnosed as chronic major depression and used various antidepressants for 8 years. She was using Venlafaxine 150 mg/day for 20 days. In subsequent interviews she said that she had abdominoplasty operation 5 years ago. She thought her doctor had fallen in love with her, however; the doctor had never mentioned this issue. She had gone to the hospital to see her doctor again and again. When we asked her, how she understood that the doctor had fallen in love with her, she could not give a reasonable answer. She had seen apparently insignificant actions as incontrovertible evidence of his devotion. She said that she and the doctor had a special spiritual understanding. Although the patient did not know the address of the doctor, she sent gifts to the doctor via his phone number. Later she said that every year at the same day the doctor made a missed call from a private number and when she answered the phone he didn’t talk to her. When we asked her why she didn’t call him, we found out that she didn’t know the phone number of the doctor. Upon these conşicting expressions, she was diagnosed as erotomanic type of delusional disorder and quetiapine 600 mg/day was initiated gradually. Erotomania is often overlooked for several reasons. Among these is the fact that the disorder is often associated with more well-known disorders in psychiatry such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, delusional disorder or another form of psychosis (such as psychotic depression, etc.) We presented a patient, who had a clinical picture of erotomania that involved his doctor a few days after operation of abdominoplasty. Erotomanics are typically female, whereas love obsessional and simple obsessional subjects are commonly male. Similarly our patient was a woman and she had a delusion of being loved by the doctor who was a stranger and had a higher social and economic status. The patient stalked her doctor by going to his clinic frequently, going his home and sending him gifts in the hope of seeing him. Our patient was treated as chronic major depression for 8 years. It is important both for the patients and victims not to overlook and delay in the initiation of therapy in erotomania phenomenon with frequent stalking.

EISSN 2475-0581