How to deal with hallucinations in a child

Schizophrenia in children is a mental illness that partially or completely destroys the mental, cognitive and emotional functions of a child. Normal processes of children's consciousness are replaced by hallucinations and delusions. The child’s personality and his relationship with the world change radically.

In the minds of children with schizophrenia, all events occurring in reality are mixed with elements of the imaginary world. The inability to separate the real world from the imagined one creates a terrible confusion in their heads, which is difficult for even a healthy person to comprehend.

A child with schizophrenia may have difficulty communicating with family and peers. The illness makes him scared, withdrawn, and social life (school, work) becomes part of an unreal world in which it is difficult for a schizophrenic to navigate. Schizophrenia cannot be completely cured; its symptoms can only be alleviated with medications and psychotherapy.

Causes

The causes of childhood and adolescent schizophrenia can be determined by genetic disorders. Mutations that are not found in healthy people are found in the DNA of sick children. Previously, the disease was not identified with genetics. Today, doctors admit the presence of a predisposition in children whose relatives (even not direct ones) have been diagnosed with a similar condition.

Also, the causes of the pathology can be traced to disorders of brain cells. When DNA elements (histones) cannot attach an acetyl group to themselves, a deficiency of acetyl-histone bonds is formed, giving rise to the diagnosis of schizophrenia in children and adolescents.

There is a version that claims that the causes of the disease lie in an imbalance of substances such as serotonin, dopamine, vasopressin, norepinephrine, cholecystokinin in the child’s body. The consequence of this imbalance is a failure in the metabolism of protein and carbohydrate compounds.

There are other reasons that can be considered a source of pathology:

• late pregnancy;
• extreme living conditions - physical and emotional violence, scandals, parental divorce, etc.;
• intrauterine viral diseases;
• mother's starvation while carrying a child;
• childhood drug addiction with the use of psychotropic substances - LSD, psilocycin, MDMA.

Interestingly, sometimes patients with schizophrenia give birth to children with a level of intelligence many times higher than the intelligence of children born to healthy parents. The reasons for this phenomenon have not yet been studied.

How to recognize?

Signs of schizophrenia in children and adolescents are weakly expressed, characterized by incompleteness and erasure. However, it is easy to identify the manifestation of symptoms of standard groups - productive and negative.

• Negative signs - normal qualities disappear, which gradually fall out and are erased from the personality of sick children. Emotionality, cognitive need, activity, and interest in the world around us decrease. Speech is impaired, thinking processes are deformed, and the level of intelligence decreases. Motor degradation occurs - the child forgets how to walk and crawl.
• Productive signs - processes appear in the minds of patients that should not be there - hallucinations, delusions, fantasies, fears, while the child takes them for reality. Inadequately perceiving their appearance, they develop delusional ideas about non-existent physical deformities and suffer from anorexia. Philosophical intoxication manifests itself - an obsession with abstract problems, which is accompanied by primitive, superficial reflections on sublime topics.

Productive symptoms are also manifested by rudeness, cruelty, sexual disinhibition, and a penchant for alcohol and drugs.

First signs

If a preschool child has schizophrenia, the first signs can be recognized no later than 7 years of age by carefully observing his behavior. If you notice strange changes in your child in the form of unreasonable fear, conversations with someone invisible, you may have good reasons to show the child to a psychiatrist.

1. Paranoia. Perhaps your child imagined that those around him were addressing him in a humiliating tone, that everyone around him was conspiring against him?
2. Hallucinations. Have you noticed that he hears voices, talks to them, sees things that don’t exist?
3. Decline in hygiene. Have you become indifferent to your appearance, indifferent to hygiene?
4. Unreasonable anxiety, fear. Has your child complained that he is afraid of any unusual things? Are his fears not similar to the usual “horror stories” of children, like monsters in the closet? Does he express concerns about non-existent things that are invisible to others?
5. Isolation. Perhaps he suddenly lost interest in communicating with peers, is indifferent to children's games, and cannot build long-term relationships with children his own age?
6. Extreme moodiness. Have you experienced sudden, unfounded mood swings, at least for obvious reasons?
7. Fragmentation of speech. Have there been any cases where the child lost the ability to adequately express himself or conduct a dialogue within the framework of the usual model?
8. Chaotic thoughts. Have you noticed that he is sometimes unable to separate dreams and TV fantasy stories from real events?

If at least 5 of the 8 signs match the symptoms that can be identified in your child, you may be experiencing the first manifestations of schizophrenia.

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To make your subsequent consultation with a specialist as productive as possible, keep a diary and write down any unusual symptoms that you can identify. For further diagnosis, contact your psychiatrist's office.

Types of hallucinations in a child

The main sign of hallucinations in a child is his behavior.
Unnatural manners, when a child constantly looks around, tries to hide, or suddenly stops and stares intently at one point, indicate an anxious state and possible hallucinations. Other signs include confused speech, unclear thinking, which means the brain is not functioning clearly, and perhaps pathological processes are taking place in it. Hallucinations vary in form - true and pseudohallucinations; they can be simple or complex. With true images, they seem real and are seen from the outside; for example, a person thinks that he sees his friend at the table and is talking to him. With pseudohallucinations, ghosts, false sensations are only in the head. Everything is “seen” only by the mind.

If a child, for example, hears only one voice, this is a simple hallucination, but when he sees a ghost and feels its touch, we are talking about complex hallucinosis.

In addition, hallucinations are distinguished by the area of ​​occurrence - in which of the analyzers (perceive information and form a response to it) of the nervous system they are formed. On this basis they are classified as:

1. Flavoring
   . When an incomprehensible taste appears in the mouth, completely unrelated to the food consumed. It can be so unpleasant that a person refuses to eat.
2. Tactile
   . When touching the body is felt. Let's say someone touches or a bug crawls, there is a feeling of cold, heat, someone tickles, tingles, although there are no irritants that cause such sensations.
3. Auditory hallucinations in a child
   . Some of the most common and are most often the result of severe overwork. The child hears various voices that can turn into a scream or whisper, they praise and scold. Such imaginary sensations cause fear.
4. Visual hallucinations in children (hypnagogic)
   . They often occur along with auditory ones. There may be some scary images that usually visit at night. The child is in a panic and may scream in fright. If the parents took what happened seriously, after a confidential conversation with their son (daughter), the vision will disappear forever.
5. Internal (visceral)
   . When the presence of foreign objects or living creatures in the body is felt, for example, a dog is gnawing on its entrails, the ear is blocked with cotton wool, etc.
6. Vestibular
   . Loss of sense of balance. Such hallucinations are typical of adolescence. Often boys and girls feel like they are falling or flying, even see themselves passing through a wall.

Important! Don't dismiss or laugh at your child's fears! Try to understand his painful condition with him.

Forms

The outcome of any form of schizophrenia is irreversible mental defects: emotional impoverishment, abulia, disrupted thinking and speech, severe dementia.

Paranoid

The paranoid form of schizophrenia is rare in children, more often in young men and adults. But if paranoid schizophrenia is diagnosed at the age of 10-12 years, then its manifestations will be expressed by fears, delusions, persecution mania, and philosophical intoxication. The child may suddenly become extremely hostile, angry, especially towards loved ones, refuse to eat, and become anorexic. He feels like there is a conspiracy everywhere, as if they want to poison him or do something else terrible.

Catatonic

It is characterized by motor pathologies - catatonic agitation, which is expressed in monotonous movements and manipulations with things, unnatural mobility - flapping of arms, etc. Motor activity periodically turns into a state of stupor, strong muscle tension, freezing in an awkward position, and immobility. The child is withdrawn and detached from the real world, suffers from depression, negativism, refuses to eat, talk, hides in a corner, and does not respond to questions.

Hebephrenic

Most often observed in school-age adolescents and young men. At first, the child becomes absent-minded, suffers from insomnia and acute headaches. The main feature of this form is foolish behavior, unmotivated gaiety and excitement. The child commits monotonous, absurd actions, becomes eccentric, grimaces and grimaces. Sometimes he hallucinates, comes up with crazy ideas, as if he wants to cheer up others.

Simple

The simple form of schizophrenia often occurs in children, less often in youth. The child rapidly loses interest in learning, becomes lethargic, indifferent, and withdrawn. The level of intelligence decreases, paranoia and hallucinations progress. The child becomes aggressive, especially if he is forced to go to school, tries to leave home, wanders aimlessly anywhere, and commits antisocial acts.

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Grafted

Develops in children, in adolescence, if there have been any head injuries or brain lesions that caused mental retardation. This form is grafted onto suitable soil, affecting children who in the past showed bouts of capricious stubbornness, were withdrawn, irritable, perhaps they suffered an unknown disease or intoxication.

Classification of hallucinations

Hallucination is a pathological disturbance of perception in which the organs of touch feel (see, hear) something that is not actually there, in contrast to illusions, in the presence of which the qualities of a really existing object are simply distorted. Hallucinations occur regardless of the patient’s wishes, are violent in nature, cannot be controlled by consciousness and willpower, and cannot be caused by external stimuli.

Classification of hallucinations by sensory organs:

• visual;
• auditory;
• tactile;
• olfactory;
• visceral (internal organs) or muscular;
• mixed, this also includes hypnagogic and hypnapompic hallucinations (associated with sleep).

Regarding sensory content:

1. The real ones are felt as the presence of something that is not there, outside the body, from a place that can be clearly indicated by the patient, and are perceived inseparably from real objects;
2. Pseudo-hallucinations are felt inside the body (a voice is heard inside the head), accompanied by a feeling of “doneness”, the unreality of what is happening, the patient is aware that these sensations cannot be caused by real events.

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Diagnostics

Diagnosis of schizophrenia in children includes laboratory tests and psychological methods. The psychiatrist will offer to undergo a comprehensive diagnosis, which will include:

• MRI to identify changes in brain structure typical of schizophrenia, study functional activity in each area of ​​the brain and exclude possible tumors.
• Electrical encephalography to reflect a clear picture of brain bioelectrical activity.
• Duplex scanning of blood vessels to identify possible diseases - atherosclerosis, pathologies of venous outflow.
• Neurotest to determine the presence of autoantibodies to protein compounds in nerve cells - diagnostics of the effectiveness of the functions of the nervous system.
• Psychological tests to determine the adequacy of thinking, memory, perception and attention, and to identify malfunctions in the brain.

At the same time, diagnostics of the digestive, respiratory, endocrine and cardiovascular systems will be carried out. Tests for the presence of drugs in the blood, Epstein-Barr virus and herpes are required. Sometimes the cerebrospinal fluid is examined to make sure there is no infection or cancer.

Drawings

Drawings of children with schizophrenia are an effective method that complements clinical research. Creative work helps the child express his experiences and reveal typical tendencies of psychological disorder.

It is difficult to identify pathology from one drawing; it is only a signal, displaying possible symptoms of a child’s unhealthy psyche.

The best drawings, from a diagnostic point of view, are obtained when creative work is carried out on a free topic, without specifying the task.

Drawings of sick children contain certain signs that help identify symptoms of schizophrenia at an early age:

• Symbolism - in a drawing, certain information is encrypted in a certain way. It is difficult for others to decipher such a code; sometimes the child himself is not able to understand his work.
• Stereotyping – the patient constantly repeats himself in his drawings. Each new work includes the same image, object, form.
• Disruption of the “associative apparatus” - the components of the object that the child is trying to portray are incoherent and torn. When depicting, for example, a person or an animal, the patient draws it in parts, or even draws some parts on another sheet.
• Unexplained forms - the work consists of various, incoherent elements, unfinished objects, the shape of which is difficult to determine. The drawings of living creatures have a rather strange appearance - non-existent animals.
• Agglutination - when examining several paintings, you can notice how one work smoothly flows, “penetrates” the plot of another.

If we talk about color, schizophrenic children prefer to abstract themselves from certain shades and get irritated at the sight of certain colors.
With sluggish schizophrenia, the attitude towards color is apathetic, but if the attack progresses, the child can be wildly irritated by black and red. The symptoms of schizophrenia are clearly visible in color drawings. Frequent signs of the disease are an unnatural combination of colors (the sun is red and the grass is black). If the picture is painted in a dull gray color, but there is a bright spot, a flash, this indicates an impending attack.

Tests

Specific schizophrenia, which does not allow one to examine oneself using conventional clinical methods, leaves the only key to understanding the patient’s inner world – psychological tests.

Test "Mask"

The patient is shown a drawing of a mask, which has a curved shape and the viewer sees it from the concave side. A child with a normal psyche perceives rounded shapes, the play of light and shadow, so the mask seems convex to him. But the eyes of a schizophrenic cannot be deceived - he will see that the mask is concave.

The patient’s brain will not perceive the listed indicators, or will not connect them with the object, will not establish a connection between the mask and the phenomena surrounding it. Against the background of the confusion that seems to him, he will see only a concave mask.

Luscher color test

The test consists of 8 colors. The child will be asked to choose colors according to the degree of pleasantness - from the color that is most pleasant to the color that is not pleasant or annoying. The test is carried out in a well-lit room with natural light.

The mechanism of the test is simple - the child will choose colors subconsciously. Analysis and decoding of the test answers indicate that mentally ill people prefer yellow. It is not for nothing that the color yellow is identified with madness.

Description and mechanism of development of hallucinations in children

Hallucinations in children are not uncommon. Most often they appear at early school age, when he is 7-8 years old. A heavy workload in the first school years has an adverse effect on a fragile child’s body. Overwork affects the nervous system, it malfunctions, sometimes they manifest themselves in the form of hallucinations: whispering voices are periodically heard, false visual images appear. This anxious state occurs in both boys and girls, but it is not always a disease.

The mechanism for the development of hallucinations lies in the activity of the brain, in those areas that are responsible for the perception and processing of information. When, due to various reasons, the functioning of the analyzers of the nervous system occurs, for example, those responsible for auditory perception, false voices may arise. This is the general principle of the appearance of imaginary feelings not only in children, but in all people - both men and women.

It is necessary to distinguish between hallucinations and illusions in children. The latter are completely natural for them. Dreams help a child live, but hallucinations are uninvited guests that cause a feeling of discomfort. They do not help, but depress the life of a little person.

If a child’s hallucinations occur periodically and do not cause much concern, there is still no need to ignore them. It is recommended to show the child to a specialist to be sure of his health. When unhealthy images and other hallucinatory manifestations often bother the baby, this is already a deviation in mental development. This cannot be done without the help of a psychiatrist.

It is important to know! Hallucinations in a child are not always a disease, but one cannot be lenient towards them. Consultation with a specialist is required.

Treatment

Treatment of schizophrenia in children can be carried out at home or in a hospital. Hospitalization is carried out if the symptoms indicate an acute form - in this state, children and adolescents are dangerous to others and themselves. Further rehabilitation will take place in a rehabilitation center and support groups.

Treatment combines the use of medications, individual and family psychotherapy, and specialized rehabilitation programs.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapeutic work with schizophrenic children is successfully and effectively practiced using behavioral models: “token policy”, “intensified correction”, “removal technique”, “payment for misconduct”.

Methods of creative self-expression turned out to be no less effective: elements of art therapy, psychodramatic performances, body-oriented techniques, examples of dance, integrative therapy, as well as other existential methods.

Drugs

Progressive schizophrenia in children may require the use of psychotropic drugs - these are atypical antipsychotics that act on nerve receptors, significantly inhibiting negative manifestations and preserving the functions of thinking and perception at a satisfactory level.

The effect of antipsychotics is not able to completely suppress the symptoms of schizophrenia in children of different ages, but they help smooth out the manifestations of the disease.

The most effective are Thorazine, Geodon, Haloperidol, Zyprexa, Prolixin, Clozapine, Stelazine, Melaril, Triphalon and Navan. It is prohibited to stop taking medications on your own due to the high risk of relapse.

The dose of the drug is determined by the doctor, since it is difficult to choose the right one, taking into account the stage of the disease. Moreover, all neuroleptics have side effects. Therefore, a doctor treating a child with medications must monitor symptoms of insulin resistance so as not to provoke diabetes mellitus.

Electroshock

Electroshock is used only in the treatment of older children and adolescents exclusively in extreme cases, in order to quickly bring the child out of a state of deep depression. The procedure is as follows: the brain is exposed to a short discharge of electric current.

First, the patient is euthanized and medications are administered to bring the muscles into a relaxed state. Electroshock treatment can help with severe depressive states when there is a risk of suicide attempts.

Ways to combat hallucinations in children

When a child has hallucinations, all that remains is to fight them, especially if they have become persistent. But how to get rid of them depends on the general health of the child and the severity of the external manifestation of the hallucinatory state. In mild cases, parents themselves can help their child avoid imaginary visions.

Independent actions to combat hallucinations in a child

Under no circumstances should you laugh at his feelings or convince him that all this is “nonsense, just a dream.”
The child needs to be reassured and told: “Don’t be afraid, nothing bad happened, I’m next to you.” It is necessary to measure the temperature and make sure that the condition is not serious. The windows should be closed; external irritants, extraneous voices and noises should not reach. No TV or computer! However, you can’t leave it alone either! The child must be surrounded with care. The main thing is a feeling of security.

You can give your child a mild sleeping pill. These may be Magne B6, Persen, Tenoten. The composition of such preparations includes extracts of various herbs that have a sedative effect - valerian, mint, and some others. Homeopathic tea Nervoflux is not bad, motherwort tincture and codeine are recommended.

When the child gets better - walks in the fresh air, creative activities, for example, drawing, visiting various clubs. This will distract the boy (girl) from extraneous thoughts and unpleasant sensations. Then it is quite possible that the hallucinations will go away on their own.

It is important to know! No independent experiments with your child’s health! Medicines can be given to him only as prescribed by a doctor.