My husband has had strong hallucinations from the beginning, then and now often involving worries about burglars coming to take our stuff. Lately they've become even more paranoid, with him telling his son the "burglars" were also going to kidnap me and slash my throat. Said he wished he still had his guns. (Gone since an early incident when I found him at the back door with a gun and the cops on the way.) His pysch. put him on Depakote, which worked for about two weeks, but now he's back to his old ways. Increased the dose by a 1/2 pill in the evening but that doesn't seem to make a dent. Am working closely with the psych. but would like to know if others have had experience with this and whether any meds worked.

Hi Kathy,
My mom has had fears and delusions about kidnapping, burglaries, and fires for perhaps a year (also people falling off the roof.) I think some of this has been triggered by the horrid 6 pm news, which seems to be following an agenda driven by market research that says people tune in to see this stuff. Anyway the last straw was when she became convinced that my grandson had been kidnapped and abused, and rescued by a neighbor, and she went around telling other people about the neighbor's heroism. A couple of months ago we put her on a very small dose of seroquel (quetiapine) - about half a pill, or 12.5 mg, at bedtime only. Since then no one has been kidnapped and only one fire. (She does still feel anxious about things sometimes and often tells me to drive carefully on the way home and watch out for bad people - about 3 and a half miles from one end of our peaceful college town to the other. But no phone calls from my dad needing to convince her that I am ok. I'm willing to go higher on the seroquel if needed but so far, so good, and it does make her rather sleepier.

Good luck to you!
Tough challenges to face...
Laurel

Kathy, Frank was paranoid, people putting chains around our house and driving off with it, neighbors looking in and taking pictures, road blocks with police racing up the street to get him, it never ended. He was put on Zyprexa, after a couple other meds created more problems. His Dr. worked him up to 15mg and over the four years he was on it, decreased to 2.5mg, he took it until he passed away. Thinking back, I will check my journal, but I don't think he had any paranioa after taking it. Zyprexa is not a 1st choice med.

Good luck, I hope you find the right balance of meds.

Gerry

Delusions are very hard to treat with medication. The meds that seem to work sometimes are the atypical antipsychotics. The one most LBD experts start with is Seroquel (quetiapine). These are dangerous meds, so monitor your husband very closely, even at the first dose.