Abstract
Background and Objectives: Delusional disorder is a relatively uncommon psychotic disorder. The major psychiatric symptoms are systematized delusions without any other major psychiatric symptoms. Delusional disorder associated with significant complications such as job dificulties, divorce and seperation, impaired interpersonal relationship and sometimes deliquency.Socio cultural factors have significat role in the etiology of this disorder. There are a few studies about clinical and demographical features of this disorder in our country, so this study was designed to evaluate the clinical and demographical features of delusional disorder in hospitalized patients.
Material and Methods: This is a cross sectional study and the subjects were 68 patients who had delusional disorder diagnosis in their medical records. They were admitted to Razi hospital of Tabriz since1999 to 2003.The clinical and demographic features of these patients collected from their hospital records and the results analyzed with descriptive statistical methods.
Results: the mean age of patients was 50years old, most of the patients were male (%79/5), married (%82/5), and the most common delusion were persecutory (%53). Other important clinical symptoms were auditory hallucination (%26/5), depressed mood (%54/5) homicidal idea (%35/5) and suicidal idea (%29/5).
Conclusion: Delusional disorder is a serious psychiatric disorder with important psycho social impairment, many clinical symptoms and a very bad outcome. The most important clinical symptoms in this study were, persecutory and jealous delusions, depressed mood, suicidal and homicidal ideas. Unlike schizophrenia and mood disorders this disorder is more prevalent in aged and married patients.