Cleveland Clinic psychologist Cynthia Van Keuren shares the importance of speaking candidly with your physician about psychosis-related symptoms in doctor’s appointments.
Transcript
The caregiver may be reluctant to let the prescribers or the medical team know about the symptoms, out of a sense of protecting the person with Parkinson’s disease’s privacy.
It’s really important that psychosis be treated with as much value and importance as any other motor or nonmotor symptom of Parkinson’s disease in order for the prescriber to be in the best position to be helpful.
The person with psychosis may not have insight into their symptoms or recognize the need for treatment. So it’s really important that the caregiver be advocating, to speak up on the person’s behalf, and to make sure that the providers have the most accurate information about how to be helpful.
Having a plan of action is the best way to support the person with Parkinson’s, and that plan of action may need to evolve and change over the course of the person’s care or their disease progression. So always keeping current on the symptoms and keeping the medical team informed as to what is happening is the best way to be helpful.
Having the conversations about the risk of psychosis with the person with Parkinson’s is the best way to respect their wishes, to understand what help they may want to have at some point, should they develop some symptoms of psychosis. Again, normalize that experience as just something we anticipate may be a risk with Parkinson’s disease is the best way to normalize that experience.
And also to understand what nonpharmacologic treatment options might be available so that the caregiver and the person with Parkinson’s know what to really expect from that treatment. Visit when you go and report these symptoms. Mental health providers can be available to work with the person with Parkinson’s.
Normalizing the experience, adjusting the plan of care, addressing the symptoms, and to keep the open lines of communication among all of those involved in the treatment plan.
