Can you point me to some good resources on the subject of people doing things they don't remember and instead blaming them on other people?
Asked by
Jeruba (
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February 15th, 2022
I’m talking about someone’s behavior and the memory of it being affected by drugs, mental health issues, or both. Something like an “evil twin” syndrome—where the person feels persecuted by an unknown harasser who steals his things, messes with them, destroys them, and/or plants odd items among his belongings.
The suspected or hypothesized reality is that the person is doing all these things himself in an altered state, without being aware of them or remembering them. He then goes into rages of blaming and accusing and paranoia against others who are not doing anything to him at all.
This includes repeated calls to police to say, for example, that someone (he names the culprit, says he has proof) damages an expensive tool or makes a car inoperable. He can show the damaged item. This does not amount to any proof of the culprit, but he knows who did it. He flips out in the same way when he thinks someone has put a hole in the bottom of a plastic tub so that now it leaks, or stolen the handle from a small hand tool, or taken three nutrition bars.
Is there a name for this? Is there literature that you can refer me to? I need to get some kind of handle on it. There’s no use waiting for the person to seek help of his own accord, but I need help.
Thank you for any pointers or references.
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A break in a person’s hold on reality (psychosis) can be caused by more than one mental illness. What you describe could be schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, a form of bipolar disorder, or more that I’m unfamiliar with. I forget what it’s called, but there’s an actual name for not believing in your own mental illness.
It is worse than hell for the families around the person.
I will look for resources.
NAMI Family Support Groups are well regarded.
I agree with @Hawaii_Jake and would add if they are self medicating with alcohol or drugs they would fall under dual diagnosis. With dual diagnosis there is some work to be done to figure out what behaviors are caused by the substance abuse and what is actually underlying mental illness.
You need really good professionals to diagnose and treat dual diagnosis if that is what you are dealing with. Most likely it would start inpatient and then eventually move to outpatient. Inpatient is good, because they also run bloodwork that most doctors don’t do otherwise. Like thyroid, has that been tested? That can exacerbate mania, or even cause it.
Is he not sleeping well? Sleep deprivation causes a lot of memory and anxiety problems too. Is he paranoid?
I just thought of a couple more.
Dementia sometimes people accuse others of doing something they did either out of loss of memory or embarrassment.
Also, a brain injury or tumor can cause all sorts of bizarre behavior.
Thanks. Please reread the main subject-line question, though. I’m asking for resources, unless you are an expert speaking from your own professional knowledge; books, for example, or articles, other media, or just names of authorities whose work I could look up.
Are you looking for weighty clinical diagnostic stuff or milder narrative, that’s great reading? If the latter, I find anything by Oliver Sacks fascinating. They’re wonderfully crafted detective stories.
The term “anosognosia” seems to partially describe what you are saying. It is a condition in which the mentally ill person is unaware of their condition. It is a symptom of several different illnesses such as schizophrenic and bi-polar.
https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/what-is-anosognosia
@HP, I’m looking for something that will help me understand what I’m seeing. I’ve read several of Oliver Sacks’s books, and yes, they’re good, but they concentrate mostly on unusual neurological conditions rather than mental illness. I’m after a psychiatric view and not entertainment. Do you have any suggestions?
@Kardamom, I’ll follow that lead. Thank you.
What I think is going on here is that he blacks out on drugs and performs acts of sabotage against himself or else just commits aberrant behavior and has no memory of what he did when he comes out of it. But then he flat refuses to consider the possibility that it was his doing, and he blames other people, to the point of repeatedly calling the police. That’s one of the places where the mental damage of long substance abuse shows up.
There are numerous other complications that I won’t go into, but I feel like I’m on my own to grasp this and try to figure out a way toward help. So yes, I think I need clinical stuff.
I PMd you a link that I hope can help you find some local resources.
There’s also Disassociative Identity Disorder, but it’s a controversial diagnosis and exceedingly uncommon—at least that’s my understanding. Almost certainly not what you’re describing, but I believe it’s at least a plausible (if unlikely) explanation.
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