Dorian Gray Syndrome: the disease of thinking you’re the youngest in the room when you are the oldest

One of the many beauties of medicine is that it’s constantly inventing new diseases. This means more specialists, more research, more institutes, more presidents of institutes, more patients, more journals, more prestige, more treatments, more drugs, more conferences, more airmiles,  and, of course, more income. Pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists are particularly proficient at inventing diseases: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–1) published by the American Psychiatric Association supported by pharmaceutical companies in 1951 had 106 conditions while DSM-IV published in 2000 had 297. Half of the American population now has a diagnosable mental disorder, a remarkable achievement.

I’m proud to announce a new disease, which I’ve called Dorian Gray Syndrome. I thought that I was the only person in the world to suffer from this awful condition, but now that I’ve met another sufferer I feel confident that this is a widespread condition. There may be millions of us.

The central feature of the disease is the conviction–indeed, the knowledge–that you are the youngest person in the room when you are actually the oldest or one of the oldest. It occurs only in men and by definition only in the old, although it can come on as early as the ;ate 40s. That it occurs only in men suggests a gene linked to the Y chromosome. Victims tend to be bumptious, frivolous, iconoclastic, loud, talkative, and suffer from mild disorder of thought. Dressing badly and inappropriately is a sign of the condition, but the pathognomonic sign is that victims never look in the mirror. It is a life-long condition cured only by death, although the funeral of victims can be tedious and embarrassing.

One of the worst characteristics of this terrible disease is that the families suffer more than the victims.

The condition is called Dorian Gray syndrome after the character in Oscar Wilde’s novel who stayed young while a portrait of him in the attic aged. Gray ages instantly and horribly when he stabs the picture. So far this has not been reported among victims of the new disease, raising questions about the renaming of the disease. Smith’s disease has been mooted.

At the moment nothing can be done for the victims and their families, but a charity has been launched. One of the first acts of the charity will be to pressure governments, WHO, and the United Nations into funding research into and raising consciousness about this terrible disease.