The Paranoid Aren't Always Delusional...

I have an evaluation I will be conducting to find out if a person is delusional or not. The person has a history of alcoholism and is convinced that his/her brother is responsible for his/her mother's death. The examinee claims to have "documented evidence" which I will have to review. These are the kinds of evaluations I love to do. They require a bit of sleuthing to try and get to the bottom of what is really going on. Although it is likely this person actually is delusional, or that she has developed Korsakoff's Syndrome through her years of alcohol abuse, it is also possible that she is telling the truth. It reminds me of a Cold Case show I watched (the true stories, not the fictionalized ones) where a woman was in and out of jails and mental health institutions her whole life. She always told a story of her mother killing her older sister, tying children to chairs, locking kids in the closet for days at at time, and killing another sister. Everyone assumed she was delusional and she was prescribed heavy antipsychotics to help her symptoms decrease. Turns out in the end, she was telling the truth and those two murders were finally solved. I will have to see how this evaluations turns out... :)