Delusional Disorders: An Overview

In recent years, delusional disorders have emerged as a focus of clinical research and treatment innovation. Despite these advances, clinicians are still relatively ill informed about this group of disorders. The present review tries to up-date on historical aspects, current nosology, epidemiology, validity of the concept and treatment strategies for the delu-sional disorders. Over the years the concept of delusional disorders has been changing and has still not crystallized fully. The variation in diagnostic criteria over the years has hampered research in this field. The available research is mostly retrospective, with control groups of schizophrenia, and focusing more on demographic variables than the illness, treat-ment and outcome variables. There is a need for prospective studies with a variety of control groups and focus on a wide array of parameters that can help to validate delusional disorders as an independent diagnostic entity (German J Psy-chiatry 2006;9:62-73)