Undead Insanity
Undead insanity is a mental disease that causes a vampire to lose their mind. It is a form of mental decay. It is a traumatic disease that slowly causes a vampire to forget those around them, forcing relationships to enter a state of unknown balance. This can be quite traumatic, leaving the host filled with confusion and regret. And it makes the vampires feel like they are losing control of who they are, slowly slipping into madness.
Causes
It is a hereditary disease that can lie dormant for generations, only beginning to appear when a vampire starts reaches the age of 1,500 years. However, some cases have found that doing blood crystals increases a vampire's chance of getting undead insanity.
Symptoms
Mental confusion and decline are often the first symptoms, with irritability and personality changes taking effect as the mind slowly degrades back to that of a newborn fledgling. Other symptoms include:
- Cognitive
- disorientation
- inability to speak or understand language
- making things up
- inability to recognize common things
- Behavioral
- restlessness
- lack of restraint
- wandering and getting lost
- Mood
- anxiety
- loneliness
- mood swings
- nervousness
- Psychological
- depression
- hallucination
- Muscular
- inability to combine muscle movements or unsteady walking
- Also common
- memory loss
- falling
- jumbled speech
- sleep disorder
Treatment
Medications and therapy have a chance of working out if caught in the early stages.
Prevention
While those who carry the undead insanity gene cannot prevent getting it later in life, they can help suppress it to make sure they can live a longer life without the symptoms appearing within the first 60 years after turning 1,500 years old.
However, the vampires who develop Blood Crystal Cancer are exempt from getting undead insanity. It is unknown why.
Cultural Reception
Vampires see the signs as a reminder of a tragic time when blood crystals were first being sold and almost everyone was using it. The younger generations are worried about getting undead insanity, causing them to take all sorts of preventable treatments to keep themselves safe.
Great article, I especially like the way you sorted the symptoms and gave a nice and clean overview of them. As this was the first article of yours I discovered, I really love the sidebar moving along while reading.