As an Alzheimer's caregiver, how should I handle hallucinations?

During the mid stage, hallucinations and/or delusions may make their appearance for the first time. Hallucinations and/or delusions may be of two types that have very different meanings and require a different type of response. The first type of hallucinations or delusions consists of images, voices or beliefs that are what I call innocent distortions of reality.

They tend to “re-animate” the world of the patient with interesting but harmless visions, voices or beliefs. One example of this might be a patient who complained that a cow was regularly coming into the living room. The patient sees the cow but you do not.

The patient however is not afraid of the cow and is not threatened by the fact that there is a cow in his living room. A dangerous hallucination or delusion is one in which the patient feels threatened by the imagined vision, voice or belief, and is intent on defending himself against it. This requires a very different kind of response.

For the latter you need to consult with the patient’s doctor who may be able to prescribe a major tranquilizer or even give an injection. For the innocent hallucination you have two choices: you can either go along with the hallucination without contradicting the patient, or you can become creative as the caregiver did whose husband saw the cow in his living room. She agreed with him that there was a cow, and said to her husband, “Let’s open the door and push the cow out of the room.”

She opened the door, pushed the cow out of the living room, and her husband was satisfied. The vision of the cow never returned.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.