While reviewing the medications for Mom we began a discussion to remove Quetiapine from her regimen. She has been taking the minimal dosage for nearly 3 years, and she hasn’t had any hallucinations that we’ve seen. The doctor and neurologist are in the process of making determinations.
I made a comment to one of the staff about this, and I was told about two other LBD patients who reside in the care facility, neither of whom I’ve had contact. One, a male, sees kittens and tries to trap them. The other, a female, sees children; apparently, while she is at the dining table she has been known to order these kids out from under the table and to go away. Mom had hallucinations of people entering her home and taking things - something far more traumatic. So, this led me to wonder whether there is a connection between a person’s own psyche/personality and what they hallucinate?
While personality may be germane to the types of hallucinatory events, the causes have more to do with the psychosis produced in the brain through increased dopamine levels (PsychCentral).
IN fact, should the patient begin to develop psychoses in the early stages of, say, Parkinson’s, then the diagnosis will become Lewy Body Dementia. This is because the cerebral cortex and the substantia nigra are affected, while with Parkinson’s, it’s the brain stem and the olfactory bulb that holds the beginnings of the disease (Parkinson’s Disease Foundation).
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| with Thanks to Bimaristan Al-Masuri |
There wasn’t any research, though, that I could locate that would ascribe anything about personality and the connection to types of hallucinations - for instance, why would one person have traumatic ones, another sweet kittens, and another naughty children? Is there a connection to their past life or psyche?
After reading several clinical studies and scouring articles involving psychoses, hallucinations, PDD, LBD, and other assorted ailments, I began to learn something: Usually, lesions (or, in our case Lewy Bodies) have taken hold of a part of the brain which then leads to the type of hallucination experienced - be it auditory, olfactory, tactile, or visual. Now, I realize this has little to do with the connection of personality, but….
With LBD and other dementia patients, there are other factors taken into account for the causes of the problem(s): Urinary Tract Infections, Anxiety, and Dehydration, for instance. There are also other brain injuries and diseases which could lead to more prevalent hallucinations that are far more severe, but we won’t be including these today.
Of course, this is where I’ll leave you. There’s nothing worse than working a full day, coming in to read something and finding yourself having to re-read in order to catch all the information - that’s why I’m only going so far with this.
But don’t you wonder sometimes? And doesn’t this question make sense? Perhaps I’ll do a little more digging...
Some Interesting References:
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