Emedinews:Insights on Medicolegal Issues:What is delirium?

• In delirium, the consciousness of the person is disturbed with impaired orientation, blunted critical faculties and irrelevant or incoherent thought content.
• A person may go into the state of delirium in many conditions, such as due to mental unsoundness, acute conditions like high fever, acute poisoning cases, as in dhatura poisoning and head injury
• Delirium tremens is a condition of delirious state, which occurs in chronic alcoholics due to sudden increase of the dose of alcohol or sudden withdrawal or some diseases and head injury etc. There is incoherency, coarse or violent tremor, hallucination, disorientation etc.
• During such a mental state the person may commit some unlawful, destructive act for which he is not legally responsible, because delirium is considered as a state of definite mental abnormality.