My father had severe psychosis with his PD diagnosis that presented mostly late at night with delusions and violent outbursts. This was 30 years ago and his doctor prescribed tranquilizers, something we don’t see used much anymore. It didn’t really help, the delusions were still there, he just couldn’t act on them as quickly giving my mother more time to get away from him and call for help.

My husband and I have talked a lot about cognitive changes he might encounter. It is important that he knows he can tell me if he sees things that aren’t there or has disturbing thoughts because there are physical reasons this happens. One explanation for the hallucinations is that his brain misperceives the messages his eyes are sending. Somewhere in his brain’s neural routing processes, things go haywire and he either can’t complete the thought or he misidentifies things. In my father’s case, he was delusional and held beliefs that just weren’t true. It did no good to try to talk him out of them, they were a part of his reality.

No one can tell me whether my husband might develop this as his disease progresses. Lots of information is available about Parkinson’s Psychosis but no one can explain what causes it or how to accept it if it happens. This stage of the illness is often more upsetting for CarePartners than for our Person with Parkinson’s because we don’t know what to do to alleviate the problem. All we can do is try to understand, look for patterns of when it is happening, share information with the medical team and be patient. Remember, it is the disease not the person.

For more information, check out the Primer on Dealing with Hallucinations and Delusions on the Davis Phinney Foundation’s website, or this article on the Healthline website Can Parkinson’s Disease Cause Hallucinations?.