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Can Tegretol help mild hallucinations + delusions?


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Hi,

This is my first post here, which I'm doing on behalf of my 79 year old mother. 

She was recently put on Tegretol by her neurologist for some wierd hallucinations ( she sees a mist mostly in her house that gets on her, her clothes, skin, makes her cough etc) and delusions.  She's very lucid and still is going about her day, though she has some strange ideas about where the mist is coming from.  She's lucid enough to know that if she tells people her ideas, they'll think she's nuts so she keeps it quiet.

Has anyone here ever heard of Tegretol working for this kind of thing?  She was on 100 mg for two weeks with no improvement.  He just put her on 200 mg and now she says her sleep is totally messed up and she's more groggy.  She's supposed to go to 300 mg on Sunday.

She's on this because of past success with Tegretol 15 years ago, don't know the official diagnosis..I think toxic delerium for an attempt to take her off Diamox. She didn't have hallucinations though..

Do you know of other NON anti-cholinergic meds that could help someone like her?  She can't tolerate Anti-cholinergic meds even in minute doses.  30 years ago she had  psychotic break and these meds made her worse! She's also on Synthroid for hypthyroidism,Chloral Hydrate for sleep problems(years) and Evista for osteoporisis.  She also has a mild case of Cerebral Palsy.

She's had a ton of tests, two MRI's catscan, spinal tap, EEG, bloodwork and a geri psych work up a few months ago.  The psych said she had mild cognitive impairment and living alone was the problem.  At the time, her symptoms cleared up while in the hospital and she was only reporting seeing the mist at home.  Now when she goes out to church etc, anywhere out of the house she's mostly fine, though she did say that when she was in for overnight neurology testing she saw the mist.   

Any ideas on this would be welcome.  This has been really maddening. She lives out of state and there is no family around. She also doesn't have a psychiatrist right now..we weren't too thrilled with the guy who did the work up and her last doc moved out of state. So right now we are biding our time with the neurologist, hoping that he can help, but I am trying to find someone that can really understand her situation.

Thanks

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Hi Mopar Guy,

Thanks for the info- that was new for me and I've been doing some online research now on dopamine GABA etc. It was encouraging. 

Tegretol, I believe, should help with the hallucinations/delusions since it works with the GABA system which clamps down on excess dopamine (cause of delusions/hallucinations).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

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