São Paulo medical journal = Revista paulista de medicina
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Case Reports
A psychotic experience during adolescence: reasoning about differential diagnosis. case report.
The aim of the present clinical review was to illustrate the diagnostic difficulty associated with psychotic experiences during adolescence, in the light of the multiplicity of circumstances interplaying during this period. It was also intended to illustrate the observation that not all hallucinations occur in the context of a declared psychotic disorder. ⋯ Conversive hallucinations are rare in the psychiatric literature. This diagnostic hypothesis only gained consistency over a long period of follow-up within a child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient service, which was fundamental for appropriate diagnostic clarification. The authors discuss psychotic experiences that can arise from a neurotic setting and share the reasoning that was constructed in relation to the differential diagnosis. The psychogenesis and phenomenology of this young patient's conversive hallucinations and the therapeutic strategies adopted over the course of the follow-up are also discussed.