<p>My D appears to have had a day of hallucinations following four nights of not sleeping for more than a couple hours. She has sleep problems, and her housing situation at school does not make things any easier. Unlike an incident a few years ago (when she was in high school), this time she was aware that what she was seeing (puppies outside, a lobster on the floor, etc) were not real. Nonetheless, she called us terrified that she was losing her mind and having a psychotic break. The incident two years ago was one of the most frightening of my life. My D was hearing voices, seeing people outside her (second story) bedroom window, seeing soap subs seeping out from her cell phone, among other things. Does anyone have experience with this? We did have her doctor call her and reassure her that she was not "going crazy." She cannot take sleep meds because the only one that worked, Ambien, caused sleep walking and other problems.</p>
<p>I strongly suggest that she talk to the campus counseling center as soon as possible. I don't think this situation is something that should be diagnosed by any kind of doctor over the phone.</p>
<p>I have to agree with NSM. Your daughter needs a medical evaluation immediately. My son had a friend who experienced sleep deprivation over several weeks due to a crazy schedule, and he had two or three seizures. He did not, however, have hallucinations. He finally got his sleep under control with the proper medical attention and a reduction in his commitments.</p>
<p>She needs to see an MD asap. Has she been to a sleep clinic or seen a specialist for this? If not, she should.</p>
<p>You say your D's housing situation is not helping. Perhaps you could explain to your D's college's office of housing that she has a very serious problem with sleeping and ask for special accommodation if it is available. At least she should get moved down to a first story room to minimize any risks. College students are known for pulling all-nighters, but they never go days and days without sleep, and that she is experiencing hallucinations is a sign that this is quite serious.</p>
<p>And ditto everything from Northstarmom. You don't mention why she has such problems with sleeping, but they're probably being made worse by deeper issues your daughter is going through.</p>
<p>It really is an emergency situation. Suppose she hallucinates again and thinks those hallucinations are real and reacts in a way that harms herself or others?</p>
<p>Also, since she's knows she has those hallucinations, she needs to avoid sleep deprivation. There also may be other things she'll need to avoid.</p>
<p>Why is she so sleep deprived now when it's not even exam period?</p>
<p>I am not trying to scare you, but people who are bi-polar can have extended periods in which they don't sleep and then experience hallucinations and delusions. Your D needs a thorough medical and psychiatric evaluation.</p>
<p>The sleep deprivation also could be due to drug abuse. She may not be honest about any drug use with you, but I do hope she'll be honest with her doctors.</p>
<p>I'm not sure this is because of sleep deprivation... it may be something psychological.</p>
<p>Best of luck to her.</p>
<p>RE52, would moving to a single dorm room help her sleep better? This sounds serious. If she lives on campus and she is seen at the campus medical/counseling center, they may be able to facilitate an improvement in her housing situation.</p>
<p>Insomnia is a problem for which there is no quick fix, and your daughter may need your help right now with getting to an environment where she can catch up on a few hours of sleep and then seeking more long-term treatment. A resource that might help you to explore the various options is a recent book by Gayle Greene titled "Insomniac."</p>
<p>I echo everyone here who thinks she should get help ASAP.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, though-- are the hallucinations occurring when she is awake, or is she reporting things to you that might have been very vivid dreams?</p>
<p>Do we know if she perhaps had taken something for sleep? I've tried natural products like Melatonin and been shocked by the strange, vivid dreams it caused.</p>
<p>I agree that she needs to see an MD</p>
<p>I would like to add, however, that I experienced mild hallucinations (in that I knew the that I was hallucinating) one day due to severe, prolonged sleep deprivation when son was a baby. I made the now famous call to my husband to say, "I'm hallucinating, so I don't think I should drive. Can you pick up some milk on your way home?"</p>
<p>My d at one time thought she was having hallucinations. When she went to the Dr and when I described them to her old psychiatrist they both said what my D was having was not hallucinations but delusions. My D saw shadows, thought people were coming to get her. For the whole week leading up to this my D kept feeling like she had water on her. She also was not sleeping well. But the whole time it was happening my D knew they were not real. She called a friend who said they were coming right over. My D said she was sweating and shaking but kept repeating to herself it wasn't real and her friend would be there soon. My D said the whole episode only lasted minutes.
I would suggest you get your D seen by a psychiatrist.</p>
<p>Sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations. Other things can as well. A thorough medical evaluation will help define ways to get sleep and once that is established you can begin to rule out other causes. Getting the sleep is most important. Then assessing other possibilities is relevant. The college should get her into the health center and give her a place to recover the sleep debt (NOT something you can do in a dorm and something that may need to be done with medications and under supervision.) Don't panic. But also don't shy away from investigating other things (party drugs and neurobiological illnesses that sometimes manifest in the early 20s). If the college is not supportive in getting her some sleep, I'd ask for some medical leave time to sort it out at home. The good news is that she is talking to you and asking for help and you all deserve to get the support you need.</p>
<p>Two times recently I woke up early and then went back to bed. Both times had extremely vivid dreams in that additional hour or so of sleep. In one, I dreamed I was gasping and couldn't get air into my lungs, and headed to the phone to call for help. Never actually got up or did it-- I was asleep-- but it sure seemed real.</p>
<p>Do particularly vivid dreams occur because we have them shortly before we wake (so they're fresh in our memory), or because we aren't in quite as deep a sleep when we have them? Or both? From reading this short sampling of posts, it's amazing (and alarming) to see the tricks our minds can play on us.
This is why I asked the OP if her daughter was awake when she had these visions, or if perhaps she was recalling some strange dreams. But either way a visit to a Dr. or psychiatrist sounds in order. Good luck.</p>
<p>The way I read the OP, it sounds as though this has happened to the D before; it's not being diagnosed for the first time over the phone. </p>
<p>I've had mild hallucinations, audile and visual (not at the same time), from sleep deprevation; guess I should take a seat next to mafool. (Love the phone call, btw!) I think of these as dream previews, and take them as a sign I need to go to bed immediately. (Not that this happens often, mind you, as I'm now of the age at which sitting on the sofa may easily result in napping.) First time was when I was in college and had not slept for four nights; woke up on a Monday, and didn't go to bed until Friday.</p>
<p>Agree with mmaah; sounds like sleep should be the highest priority.</p>
<p>If this were me, I think I'd be focussing on what to do this very night and tomorrow just to keep her safe until she can see a doctor on Monday.</p>
<p>Some options: call her and ask her permission for you to contact her best friend. Ask the friend to stay the night with her in the same room, even if they have to rearrange a few roommates. Or, call college security to ask if they have an approach for a student who needs an absolutely safe place to be for tonight, perhaps in the college's clinic or if they have a relationship with a hospital. If you're connected with a church, see if there's a clergy to call who can send someone over to just take her home for a quiet night in a private home, as a good deed. Have the best friend escort her until she's settled safely for the night. Don't let her be alone tonight or in the company of anyone stressful. </p>
<p>Do it with your D's permission, as it sounds like she's cooperating and talking with you, reaching out for some help.</p>
<p>Like NSM, my main concern is that she not do something unsafe this night. If you have a relative or friend within a few hours' drive of the campus, ask your D if she'd please accept that person as a daytime visitor tomorrow (Sunday) just to have reliable company until Monday morning. Maybe that person can run interference and quiet the room a bit, or change scenery (get out of the dorm and in adult company).</p>
<p>On Monday, she could call or go over to the clinic for an emergency-based appointment, and see what can be done to help. You can also call the clinic as the mom, ask to speak with the nurse to be sure she's seen same-day. You might lobby for what you hope they'll do once they see her; for example, fast-track her into an appointment with the college psychologist, see about a medical need for a single, or whatever they have to offer her. Tell them the kind of weekend you've had, in case she's the kind to minimize her own problems to others. </p>
<p>She might be having a sort of panic attack, or any one of a number of possibilities, but you do need to look into it longterm as a medical issue.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, focus on safeguarding her tonight. If none of this works for you, at least ask her to lie down in bed with the phone next to her and keep it open, even just do a steady open between you and her. Get her to agree to stay put in bed, even if not asleep, just so she's physically not at risk. Let her talk to you by phone for hours, if needed. Hum to her, read "good night moon" or pipe in some soft radio music and listen together, just talking calmly a bit. Maybe she'll just drop off to sleep that way with you on the other end of the line. If so, agree you won't hang up but sleep with the phone lines open. </p>
<p>Another resource for tonight: phone College Security to ask if there's a college administrator on-call; perhaps a quiet room can be found for her, with only herself and the best friend. I'd be treating this as an emergency. Emphasize that she's sober, but you don't want her walking off of a height or something awful. They should try to help somehow. Good luck and please report back.</p>
<p>I agree that her safety is of upmost importance right now. The longer it goes on, the more at risk she could be.</p>
<p>D1 had sleep issues as a toddler. She had sleep terrors, but only when sleep deprived, for instance when she'd missed her nap, or had been kept up too late for circumstances usually beyond our control. To this day, when she's been sleep deprived, she will sleep walk/talk, and unless you knew this about her, you might not know that the strange things she'd be telling you were done so in a sleep phase. The difference is she'd never remember it the next day. I remember one night when she was in middle school, and she went into our bathroom medicine cabinet, took out the Tums bottle, took a couple out, and started eating them. She looked at us funny when we asked her what she was doing, then went back to bed on her own... didn't remember it at all the next day.</p>
<p>Frankly, she's just had a major transition in her life, and started a new internship this week. The night of the first day, she got the stomach flu, was up most the night (did not go to work the second day), slept most of the second day, then had problems going to sleep that night. She only got about three hours because she did get up to go to work on the third day, but worse, it set up that whole sleep deprivation thing that is sometimes hard to move past. She was going to take a couple of Tylenol PM Thursday night to see if it helped because she knows she shouldn't go more than a couple of nights without some decent sleep. Luckily she knows it's a problem and already said if she can't readjust by this weekend, she would try to see someone (which I don't know how she's going to handle that since she has no doctors in the new area she's moved to).</p>
<p>I just know that it's something you need to get on top of, quickly, to make sure they're safe.</p>
<p>Just thought of another resource that might be able to check in on your D: the Resdient Advisor (RA) of her dorm. They get paid to handle these kinds of in-dorm emergencies and might know a pathway to help out. I think the most you can ask as a mom is forthe RA to "go and check in" on your daughter once this evening, but at least she'll be aware there's a needful person on her floor. You can also ask your D to go leave a note on the RA's door to stop by her room tonight. But leave a signal code (scarf on the doorknob?) so the RA doesn't wake her up if she actually falls asleep! That'd be a drag.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your suggestion and concern. I was most interested in some reassurance that others had had similar experiences and that they were isolated incidents.</p>
<p>I do want to clarify a few things about my D's situation, however. As a baby and young child, she was always an excellent sleeper. Around the time she started school, she started having trouble falling asleep as her mind just would not turn off--she would lie in bed and mentally replay the tape of her day. She was always a high performer and did not evidence other obvious signs of anxiety. In retrospect, though, she probably should have received some "treatment" at a younger age. Fast forward to high school, when the pressure was on academically. Between her many AP classes, varsity sports, and social commitments, sleep became a serious problem. My heart would drop on nights when I got up in the middle of the night and saw that her bedroom light was on. </p>
<p>At some point in HS, she started seeing a psychiartist. On top of the anxiety issues, she has ADD, for which she started taking stimulants in 10th grade. (Yes, there are concerns about the interplay of the stimulants and her anxiety and sleep.) This is the doctor who saw her after the horrible hallucinations in 11th grade and who spoke to her on the phone last week. It was pretty clear that the 11th grade incident did not involve full wakefulness, although she walked into our bedroom and "seemed" awake. She did not really remember anything in the morning until I spoke to her about it. In addition, she gets regular physicals, including one last summer, which have never revealed anything more than a mild Iron deficiency. She saw a private psychiartrist weekly at school first semester freshman year (she is now a sophomore) but getting to the appointments in the snow without a car (cabs always late, etc) caused her more stress or distress than help, or so she said. At any rate, I just wanted to clarify that we do not take these issues lightly.</p>
<p>We have suggested trying to wean off of the stimulants "just to see." She is at a minimum psychologically addicted to them and is very resistent to stopping them, even during the summer when she claimed she could not do her job without them. Her doctor, for whatever reason, did not seem as insistent on the issue as we had hoped. We (doctor and parents) are in agreement that this summer we are going to insist that she try to go without. (I personally believe that the attention and concentration issues she experiences are as much anxiety as ADD; both are prevalent in her familial biology however.)</p>
<p>Since last Thursday night, she has caught up on sleep and has had no similar incidents. The sorority house mother told me and will tell her that she can use the "sick room" for sleep whenever she needs to. I am a bit concerned because one of her roommates (with whom she is no longer friends) went to the house mother after she experienced my D hallucinating. I am, of course, grateful that she went to speak to the house mother. On the other hand, I am concerned about what this girl is saying to others. I suggested to my D that she explain the situation to her roommate but, thus far, she has refused to do so. (I am not revealing that I spoke to the house mother at this point and either is she.)</p>
<p>I know the situation is a bit touch and go. She has not mentioned wanting to take a leave and I do not want to suggest it unless it becomes apparent that this incident was not isolated. She is in a sequenced program that would be disrupted by taking time off. She is stubborn and resistent to suggestions. Unless or until things appear to be getting dangerous, all I can do is make suggestions--eat well, exercise (but not at 11 PM, which is her preferred time to do so), try yoga or meditation, etc. Ultimately, as an adult, she will need to take this on for herself. </p>
<p>Thanks for listening.</p>