Cleveland Clinic psychologist Cynthia Van Keuren explains how caregivers can respond to delusions and hallucinations in Parkinson’s with empathy, patience, and calm reassurance to reduce distress for everyone involved.
Transcript
Delusions and hallucinations can be very frightening to both the person with Parkinson’s and to the caregiver.
Hallucinations are a false perception of a sensory experience, and they may or may not have an awareness that it is not real. Delusions are a fixed belief so that it doesn’t necessarily match a shared reality. It’s very real to that person.
The temptation can be there to keep correcting the person with Parkinson’s and to reorient them to the shared reality, but ultimately, that tends to be very frustrating to the person with Parkinson’s and to the caregiver.
To the person with Parkinson’s, it’s very real. And you keep telling them that it’s something different than that, and it’s going to leave them confused, frustrated, and agitated.
It may actually be more compassionate to play along with their version of reality, rather than to keep correcting them or challenging them.
It can be helpful to the caregiver if you just keep demonstrating empathy and patience. Offer reassurances to the person that they are safe. Stay calm, even if what they’re suggesting might be frightening or upsetting. Stay calm. Be that gentle voice of reason to help the person get through a situation that, to them, is very frightening.
Use active listening. So even if you don’t understand what’s going on with the person, try to relate to the fact that if you were in that situation, it would be very scary, and offering that kind of support.
You can offer empathy, even though, again, it isn’t necessarily the reality that you share, but it would be scary. It would cause anxiety and help them to manage their anxiety about the situation, and offering just simple, supportive statements to that effect.
That if that were happening right now, that would be really frightening and really scary. And those can all be the more compassionate responses to play along with what the person might be reporting to you.
