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World J Psychiatry. Jun 19, 2025; 15(6): 104247
Published online Jun 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i6.104247
Literary case study of psychosis: The Vegetarian
Gabor S Ungvari, Stanley N Caroff, Levente Csihi, Gábor Gazdag
Gabor S Ungvari, Division of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Western Australia, Australia
Gabor S Ungvari, Section of Psychiatry, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle 6160, Western Australia, Australia
Stanley N Caroff, Behavioral Health Service, Corporal Michael J Cresencz Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
Stanley N Caroff, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
Levente Csihi, Gábor Gazdag, Department of Psychiatry and Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Jahn Ferenc South Pest Hospital, Budapest 1204, Hungary
Gábor Gazdag, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, Semmelweis University, Budapest 1083, Hungary
Author contributions: Ungvari GS outlined the content of the case study; Ungvari GS and Gazdag G prepared the first draft of the manuscript; Caroff SN and Csihi L critically reviewed and corrected the manuscript; and all authors approved the final version of the text.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Caroff SN was a consultant/speaker for Medscape, EPI-Q, Clinical Education Alliance, and received royalties from American Psychiatric Press and Wolters Kluwer. The other authors have no conflict-of- interest to declare.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Gábor Gazdag, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Jahn Ferenc South Pest Hospital, 1 Köves Utca, Budapest 1204, Hungary. gazdag@lamb.hu
Received: December 16, 2024
Revised: March 18, 2025
Accepted: April 24, 2025
Published online: June 19, 2025
Processing time: 165 Days and 2 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In the “The Vegetarian”, author Han Kang presents the dramatic story of a woman afflicted with psychosis. The story is told from the perspective of both her inner thoughts and the attempts by her family to understand her struggles. In addition to a social, psychological, or feminist interpretation, the novel presents a realistic picture of psychosis that illustrates the historic phenomenological concepts of catatonia, autism, paragnomen and the praecox-feeling which are reviewed herein. Viewed as a literary case study of the impact of psychosis on patients, families and society, The Vegetarian is a fascinating addition to the standard psychiatric curriculum.