Hallucinations at night...

[womoore]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and to the internet in general. My husband was diagnosed with ALS in March of 2007. His only symptom at the time was falling due to a weak left leg. He has since progressed to a walker and he is having other symptoms.

Recently, he is becoming very depressed and has developed night hallucinations. He wakes up seeing strange things like people looking in at him through non-existent windows, seeing cats coming out of the top of my head. He also has auditory hallucinations such as hearing people talking in the house or hearing children. This only happens at night after he has gone to sleep for several hours and he wakes up talking and hallucinating.

I was wondering if this is a symptom that others of you have seen in your ALS loved ones? I'm wondering if this could also be possibly due to extreme depression. I apologize if this is a topic that has already been discussed but I'm not web savvy and can't seem to find anything about this in previous threads on this forum.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can give me into this disturbing new behavior.

[nspoc]

Hi Womoore -

This is something worth discussing with your doctor. Someone in our support group has Lewy Body Dementia - Which has similar symptoms. This is concurrent with his ALS. There are other possibilities as well, including a too high carbon dioxide level from difficulty breathing at night.

SEVERE depression can result in psychosis - is he being treated for depression? This not common, though. I would look for other causes, as well.

By the way - many neurological conditions have a related depression. Don't accept that it is natural for someone to be depressed if he has a terrible disease like ALS. I have seen many PALS successfully treated for depression, even though their ALS never gets better.


Good luck - Beth