Once it has been positively identified, pharmacotherapy follows. Antipsychotic drugs are the frontrunners in treatment for Fregoli and other DMSs. In addition to antipsychotics, anticonvulsants and antidepressants are also prescribed in some treatment courses. If a Fregoli patient has other psychological disorders, treatment often results in the use of trifluoperazine.

A widely accepted treatment for the syndrome of subjective doubles has not been developed. Treatment methods for this disease sometimes include the prescription of antipsychotic drugs, however, the type of drug prescribed depends on the presence of other mental disorders. Antipsychotic drugs (also known as neuroleptics) such as risperidone, pimozide, or haloperidol may be prescribed to treat the underlying psychiatric illness.

In addition to drug therapy, interpersonal counseling has also been suggested as a method to ease relations between the patient and his/her suspected doubles. However, the relationship between the patient and his/her double is not always negative.

One important factor may be differences or changes in parts of the brain known to be involved in representing body shape (e.g., see proprioception and body image). A neuroimaging study of two people diagnosed with clinical lycanthropy showed that these areas display unusual activation, suggesting that when people report their bodies are changing shape, they may be genuinely perceiving those feelings.

Recovery from this syndrome is situational, as some drug therapies have been effective in some individuals but not others. Patients may live in a variety of settings, including psychiatric hospitals, depending on the success of treatment. With successful treatment, an individual may live at home. In many of the reported cases, remission of symptoms occurred during the follow-up period.

This disorder can be dangerous to the patient and others, as a patient may interrogate or attack a person they believe to be a double. Inappropriate behavior such as stalking and physical or psychological abuse has been documented in some case studies. Consequently, many individuals suffering from this disorder are arrested for the resulting misconduct (see the case of Mr. B in #Presentation).

Clinical lycanthropy is a rare condition and is largely considered to be an idiosyncratic expression of a psychotic episode caused by another condition such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression.

However, there are suggestions that certain neurological conditions and cultural influences may result in the expression of the human-animal transformation theme that defines the condition.

Intermetamorphosis is a delusional misidentification syndrome, related to agnosia. The main symptoms consist of patients believing that they can see others change into someone else in both external appearance and internal personality. The disorder is usually comorbid with neurological disorders or mental disorders.

An example from medical literature is a man who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. After some time he mistook his wife for his deceased mother and later for his sister. As an explanation, he stated that he had never been married or that his wife had left him. Later he mistook his son for his brother and his daughter for another sister. Visual agnosia or prosopagnosia were not diagnosed, as the misidentification also took place during phone calls. On several occasions he mistook the hospital for the church he used to go to.

The disorder was first described in 1932 by P. Courbon and J. Tusques ("Illusions d'intermétamorphose et de la charme"), in the Journal: Annales Medico-Psychologiques issue 14, page 401-406.

Delusional misidentification syndrome is an umbrella term, introduced by Christodoulou (in his book "The Delusional Misidentification Syndromes", Karger, Basel, 1986) for a group of delusional disorders that occur in the context of mental and neurological illness. They all involve a belief that the identity of a person, object, or place has somehow changed or has been altered. As these delusions typically only concern one particular topic, they also fall under the category called monothematic delusions.

This psychopathological syndrome is usually considered to include four main variants:

- The Capgras delusion is the belief that (usually) a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.

- The Fregoli delusion is the belief that various people the believer meets are actually the same person in disguise.

- Intermetamorphosis is the belief that people in the environment swap identities with each other whilst maintaining the same appearance.

- Subjective doubles, described by Christodoulou in 1978 ("American Journal of Psychiatry" 135, 249, 1978), is the belief that there is a doppelgänger or double of him- or herself carrying out independent actions.

However, similar delusional beliefs, often singularly or more rarely reported, are sometimes also considered to be part of the delusional misidentification syndrome. For example:

- Mirrored-self misidentification is the belief that one's reflection in a mirror is some other person.

- Reduplicative paramnesia is the belief that a familiar person, place, object, or body part has been duplicated. For example, a person may believe that they are in fact not in the hospital to which they were admitted, but an identical-looking hospital in a different part of the country, despite this being obviously false.

- The Cotard delusion is a rare disorder in which people hold a delusional belief that they are dead (either figuratively or literally), do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In rare instances, it can include delusions of immortality.

- Syndrome of delusional companions is the belief that objects (such as soft toys) are sentient beings.

- Clonal pluralization of the self, where a person believes there are multiple copies of him- or herself, identical both physically and psychologically but physically separate and distinct.

There is considerable evidence that disorders such as the Capgras or Fregoli syndromes are associated with disorders of face perception and recognition. However, it has been suggested that all misidentification problems exist on a continuum of anomalies of familiarity, from déjà vu at one end to the formation of delusional beliefs at the other.

The Fregoli delusion, or the delusion of doubles, is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise. The syndrome may be related to a brain lesion and is often of a paranoid nature, with the delusional person believing themselves persecuted by the person they believe is in disguise.

A person with the Fregoli delusion can also inaccurately recall places, objects, and events. This disorder can be explained by "associative nodes". The associative nodes serve as a biological link of information about other people with a particular familiar face (to the patient). This means that for any face that is similar to a recognizable face to the patient, the patient will recall that face as the person they know.

The Fregoli delusion is classed both as a monothematic delusion, since it only encompasses one delusional topic, and as a delusional misidentification syndrome (DMS), a class of delusional beliefs that involves misidentifying people, places, or objects. Like Capgras delusion, psychiatrists believe it is related to a breakdown in normal face perception.

A monothematic delusion is a delusional state that concerns only one particular topic. This is contrasted by what is sometimes called "multi-thematic" or "polythematic" delusions where the person has a range of delusions (typically the case of schizophrenia). These disorders can occur within the context of schizophrenia or dementia or they can occur without any other signs of mental illness. When these disorders are found outside the context of mental illness, they are often caused by organic dysfunction as a result of traumatic brain injury, stroke, or neurological illness.

People who experience these delusions as a result of organic dysfunction often do not have any obvious intellectual deficiency nor do they have any other symptoms. Additionally, a few of these people even have some awareness that their beliefs are bizarre, yet they cannot be persuaded that their beliefs are false.

The delusions that fall under this category are:

- Capgras delusion: the belief that (usually) a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.

- Fregoli delusion: the belief that various people whom the believer meets are actually the same person in disguise.

- Intermetamorphosis: the belief that people in one's environment swap identities with each other while maintaining the same appearance.

- Subjective doubles: a person believes there is a doppelgänger or double of him- or herself carrying out independent actions.

- Cotard delusion: the belief that oneself is dead or does not exist; sometimes coupled with the belief that one is putrefying or missing internal organs.

- Mirrored-self misidentification: the belief that one's reflection in a mirror is some other person.

- Reduplicative paramnesia: the belief that a familiar person, place, object, or body part has been duplicated. For example, a person may believe that they are, in fact, not in the hospital to which they were admitted, but in an identical-looking hospital in a different part of the country.

- Somatoparaphrenia: the delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one's body (often connected with stroke).

Note that some of these delusions are sometimes grouped under the umbrella term of delusional misidentification syndrome.