How common are hallucinations?

[mamabear]

My 15 year old daughter has been experiencing seizures for at least the past several months. She has a history of autistic spectrum disorder, mood disorder & anxiety disorders. We are in the process of trying to determine if her seizures are epileptic/non epileptic or both. So far one eeg showed some minor abnormalities, but her most recent 48 hour video eeg came back normal. It seems that there is a definite connection between her cycle & when the majority of her seizures occur. Currently we have had a week straight of daily seizures averaging about two a day. During this time frame she has also had two terrifying night time experiences of being choked, touched & whispering in her ear. My question is could this be related to seizure activity? Tonight she had a seizure Just before bed & a few hours later she awoke crying saying that someone was touching her.

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[giveasmile]

I'm sorry to hear that she is going through this.

Parial seizures and nocturnal frontal lobe seizures can be really terrifying and confusing when awareness is maintained. In my case it looked a lot like post traumatic stress or psychosis when it first started. Feeling like I was being choked or suffocated was very common and is often mentioned in text about certain types of seizures.

If the Neurologist isn't sure what is going on maybe wait a while and have her evaluated again.

In the meantime, is there a psychologist in the picture? I prefer psychologists to psychiatrists because they don't just fling psychotropic drug prescriptions around which can make seizures worse in some cases. They might be able to provide some comfort or coping skills for your daughter to use and also help sort out what is going on.

 

[mamabear]

Because of the autism she has been under the care of both since she was 8. She has been on celexa & risperidone, same dosage, for years. There has been talk of titrating her off of the risperidone & introducing an aed if determined she needs it in order to not medicate her.

She has been hearing voice for a few years now & over this past summer she began having more in depth hallucinations, unexplained anxiety, trouble sleeping & visual & motor issues and several staring episodes. At first everyone thought that these issues were a psychosomatic manifestation of her anxiety and/or increasing symptoms to get mid disorder. Now that seizures have begun occuring & I have learned of many different symptoms I am wondering if these episodes were smaller seizure events or a prelude to the beginning if the seizures we are now seeing.

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[giveasmile]

I'm not a doctor or pharmacist but I do know that Celexa and Risperdone don't always play nice together.

I also learned from this forum that anti-depressants and anti-psychotic drugs can lower the seizure threshold for some people. You also pointed out the hormone related events which you can look up on this site or elsewhere (catamenial epilepsy.) If there is still talk of taking her off risperdone you might want to give it a try. Your daughter is growing up and maybe is having an opposite reaction to it now. If so it would cause more dissociation, hallucincations, anxiety and night terrors and, in turn, mood issues.

Also I'm curious if any of her doctors ever tried Ativan after one of these seizures-- or when she was having anxiety/hallucinations-- and if it helped at all?

 

[mamabear]

We have given her Ativan on rare occasions where we need her extra relaxed for medical procedures. Also, the psychiatrist tried a trial of klonopin at night to help her sleep back when issues started over the summer. My daughter hated the way it made her feel & it didn't seem to help much.

I plan on doing research on her current meds. Your comments have prompted me todo that before or next appointment. Thanks for your feedback!

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