Open AccessCarbamazepine in Treatment of Visual Hallucinations: A Case of Chronic Hallucinatory Psychosis
Author(s) -
Sayantanava Mitra,
Sourav Khanra,
Supriya Kumar Mondal,
Anjana Rao Kavoor,
Basudeb Das
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
indian journal of psychological medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 0975-1564
pISSN - 0253-7176
DOI - 10.4103/0253-7176.168594
Subject(s) - visual hallucination , psychosis , carbamazepine , psychology , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , conceptualization , psychiatry , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , epilepsy
Visual hallucinations are commonly present in various neurological and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and other hallucinatory psychosis. Current conceptualization of hallucinations assume pattern completion model of thalamus to be responsible for the origin of this type of the perceptual abnormality and proposes that central inhibition of such circuits may treat hallucinations. We present a case of chronic hallucinatory psychosis with significantly distressing visual hallucinations, resistant to antipsychotics, which successfully responded to carbamazepine. This case illustrates the novel use of an antiepileptic in the treatment of resistant visual hallucinations. Targeted therapy of this kind can be considered in the future, although more evidence is required in this field.