Introduction: Grief may be complicated in patients with dementia, posing a challenge to caregivers and healthcare professionals. A case of major vascular neurocognitive disorder with pathological jealousy and major depressive disorder in grief is reported.
Case: A 73 year-old Malay lady with diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and right cerebrovascular
accident developed major vascular neurocognitive disorder with pathological jealousy and major depressive disorder. She presented with unmanageable agitation and depression after her late husband’s death. She also experienced
a bizarre delusion of her husband’s resurrection and infidelity. Her psychotropic medications were optimised and her bizarre delusion was challenged daily using validation and distraction techniques. Combined pharmacotherapy and behavioural therapy managed to resolve her psychiatric symptoms and facilitate her grief process.
Conclusion: Grief reaction in major vascular neurocognitive disorder patients is often atypical. Individualized treatment comprising both pharmacotherapy and behavioural therapy should be offered to treat atypical grief and the underlying disease.
One of the hardest challenges in marriage are how to face negative thoughts that arised from difficult
situations such as feeling inferior, abandoned, mistrust, and excessive jealousy. From the Cognitive-
Behavioral perspective, these feelings are being exacerbated by unhealthy individual thought patterns
originating from society and family upbringing. This article discusses the unhealthy thought patterns
that are common in marriage, and strategies in changing these thought patterns by using healthy
templates of Islamic thought patterns.
A middle-aged man who has been enduring financial constraint experienced a period of irritability, increased goal-directed activities and insomnia occurring along with extreme jealousy with his current wife. The episode was followed by depressed mood and non-prominent auditory hallucination. His previous history revealed a forensic psychiatry case of a murder he committed 20 years ago.
Two studies examined the ability of the life script account to explain the reminiscence bump for emotionally charged autobiographical memories among Malaysian participants. In Study 1 volunteers, aged 50-90 years, participated in a two-phased task. In the first phase, participants estimated the timing of 11 life events (both positive and negative) that may occur in a prototypical life course within their own culture. Two weeks later the participants retrieved the same set of events from their lives and reported how old they were when those events occurred. In the second study 92 undergraduate students produced life scripts for the same 11 events. The findings revealed reminiscence bumps in both life script and retrieval curves for the memories judged happiest, most important, most in love, and most jealous. A reminiscence bump was also noted for success, although this was later in the lifespan than other reminiscence bumps. It was suggested that the life scripts can be used as an alternative account for the reminiscence bump, for highly positive and occasionally for negative autobiographical memories.
Human being is not spared from a broad-ranged emotional state, including being jealous. Jealousy has both affective-cognitive and behavioural-evaluative dimension where the person perceives, or experiences a real threat on a valued relationship. As this complex emotion becomes irrational and not amenable to reason, it later transforms into a dangerously 'green-eyed monster'. This perilous situation which is viewed as pathological jealousy is a form of delusion, which is maintained by a fixed and false reasoning in an originally entrusted intimate relationship. Pathological jealousy is equally prevailing among both gender, and with a greater ubiquity among the geriatric population. The role of dopamine hyperactivity in the fronto-parietal-temporal region was implicated, with the anatomical mapping of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), cingulate gyrus (CG), and amygdala involvement in the context of the disease's neurobiology. The etiology of pathological jealousy includes major psychiatric disorders, i.e. delusional disorder, schizophrenia, mood disorder, organic brain syndrome, and among others, the drug-induced psychosis. The role of relationship issues and psychodynamic perspective, i.e. psychological conflicts with dependence on a romantic partner, and low self-esteem are involved. Pathological jealousy inherits high-risk forensic psychiatry entanglement, which may warrant intensive intervention, including hospital admission and antipsychotic treatment. Treatment options include an early recognition, managing underlying neuropsychiatric disorders, psycho education, cognitive psychotherapy, and choosing an effective psychopharmacological agent. The management strategy may also resort to a geographical intervention, i.e. separation between both persons to complement the biological treatment.