Wants kids to take action

JoMWy

My MIL has auditory hallucinations and is convinced her upstairs neighbor is watching her with secretly hidden cameras and masturbating when she showers and goes to the bathroom. Her kids are at their wits end trying to handle this. Her upstairs neighbor is actually a sweet elderly lady who lives alone. My MIL refuses to believe that. They’ve tried to explain that maybe she is hearing sounds from plumbing. She gets so mad if they suggest this. They even covered her GFI light on the bathroom switch. It didn’t matter. Her doc doesn’t want to use any additional meds because of the side effects. She’s angry that her kids won’t kill this “man” and tells her kids how awful they are and that they don’t love her because they don’t believe her and won’t put an end to it. It’s a daily battle and just getting worse. Any tips or suggestions?

Note: MIL is very weak and overweight and could never do any harm to another individual.

Iris L.

Your Mil is having delusions and also has anosognosia.  Don't try to convince her that what she think is happening is not actually happening.  Learn about validation and using fiblets.  Medication for delusions prescribed by a specialist may help.  Primary care doctors do not prescribe these types of medications.

Iris L.

JoMWy

Thank you, Iris, for your response. We are definitely in a learning stage. Her kids have all started to use some of the validation tips we’ve read about. That’s when the “If you really cared about me,” and “If you really believed me, you’d go get/kill/stop/shoot the guy” started. She’s never been particularly nice even before all this started. I will look up the other term… anosognosia and using fiblets.

Stuck in the middle

Delusions are awful, because they are as real as sunrise to the person experiencing them.

I have no experience with this, but maybe you could watch the newspapers, and next time a pervert gets arrested show the story to her and tell her you can't get to him because he is in jail.  Keep the paper and show it to her again as needed.

MacyRose

What Stuck in the middle suggested is a great idea.  Another way to do it:  Write an "official" letter from the "police" to your mother and in the letter tell her the neighbor upstairs has been arrested and will not be given bail.  Show her the letter any time she is worried about the neighbors.

Jo C.

Such an approach will in all probability not be successful.  She is suffering severely from auditory hallucinations and seems to also be delusion driven and it will not be long before she has other rigid false beliefs and may begin to develop other hallucinations.

As it is, even if shown a letter or article declaring the bad person has been arrested, it is unlikely she will remember that or believe it.  Hallucinations are different in their causation and how they manifest themselves. Horrible when seeing, hearing or tasting something that is not there; and then the rigid false beliefs of supporting delusions to make things even worse. Really needs help. In either case, she should not be left to suffer such frightening dynamics.   The physician refusing to prescribe is perhaps not understanding the dreadful effect this is having on her quality of life.   Do you feel that physician has a bias against all such meds?

Does your mother have a dementia specialist?  If so, it is probably time to have her seen in appointment and let the specialist know in advance of how serious this dynamic is and  the effect on the quality of life and how it has taken over much of said life.  You can write a detailed memo to give to the specialist so you do not have to speak about your MIL in front of her when she sees the specialist.  She should never at this point be seen alone in appointment.

If she has no dementia specialist, it would be helpful for her to be seen by one.  Our primary care MDs are wonderful at so much; however, many of  them are simply not on the cutting edge of dementia care and prescribing when matters are so profoundly difficult.

There are indeed medications that an quell the delusions and/or hallucinations.  It would be best to have  a specialist to assess your MIL and prescribe appropriately for her.  It is all about the quality of life of which your MIL is not experiencing at this point in time due to the dreadful dementia dynamics for which there really is treatment to be had.

My own LO was delusion driven and it was monumentally florid and affected her entire quality of life and caused dreadful behaviors to the nth degree.  The primary care MD was just not sufficient and did not manage the needs well at all.  Finally got to a good Neurologist who sees dementia patients as a routine part of his practice. After exam and a bit of testing, he found she did not have Alzheimer's Disease which her Board Certifed Geriatrician had assigned as her diagnosis; she actually had a behavioral variant of FrontoTemporal Dementia. That is important as meds for one type of dementia may be contraindicated in another.   This was huge in our case.  The specialist did indeed prescribe Risperdal for her; it is one of the drugs with a black box warning but such negatives as warned have been found to be low in percentage of patients using such a med.   We debated initiating the med and my Loved One (LO) was just over the moon with behaviors getting worse and worse and had begun to become a 24 hour disaster. 

We finally decided the quality of life was the most important dynamic and accepted the Riseperdal being prescribed.   In my LOs case, within 24 - 48 hours, ALL delusions were quelled.  It was stunning in the difference and the quality of life for our LO was vastly improved to a significant degree.  My only regret? That we had not approved the med earlier.  In our LOs case, there were no bad side effects and no black box effects.

Anyway; worth having a specialist to assess, ensure accuracy for type of dementia present and then prescribe appropriately to bring peace of mind and increase the quality of life.

When our LOs suffer like this, they are living a hellish existence; they are unable to make decisions for themselves and seek help; they must depend upon us to do it for them.  For me, it was unconscionable not to provide relief if it was possible to do so.

You will make your decision.   It is also true that IF there are noxious side effects of any med, you can simply decide to have the specialist consult and  change and adjust the med or just discontinue altogether.

It is a harsh situation and I can only imagine the stress and frustration this has been causing despite all your best efforts to help. Let us know how it is going and so hope you are able to find the help so badly needed.

J.