They will also want to know if there were any other symptoms around the time of the hallucinations having someone with you who was there during the period of hallucinations can help give this information. They may ask you to fill in a form or do a small test to check your memory. They may ask a lot of questions that seem quite basic or even silly to you, but these are important questions that need to be asked to make sure that there is nothing more sinister going on. What Will the Doctor Ask and Do?įirstly, the doctor will probably want to get a very clear idea about exactly what the hallucinations involve, when they started and what type they are. If you ever think of harming yourself or harming others it is also vitally important that you seek help as soon as possible. If you have any auditory hallucinations such as hearing voices when no one is around, or the television making noise even when it is off, it is important that you seek medical attention immediately. Some people may be afraid that the doctor will think they are ‘going mad’ if they present with hallucinations, but as can be seen above there are many very serious medical conditions that can account for hallucinations and they need to be looked into. If you ever begin to have a hallucination, then it is always best to seek medical attention. When Should I See a Doctor About Hallucinations? Uraemia: a build up of toxins in the body following kidney failure.Schizophrenia or other psychiatric disorder with schizophrenic features.Partial Seizures and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: mostly visual, but also taste and smell.Narcolepsy: hypnagogic phenomena are common.Migraine Headaches: visual ‘aura’ of unformed flashes of light.Herpes Encephalitis: infection in the brain with the Herpes virus taste and smell hallucinations are most common.Hepatic Encephalopathy: brain dysfunction due to a build up of toxins following liver failure.Drug Side-Effects: from drugs that act like dopamine such as Levodopa (Sinemet).Dementia with Lewy Bodies: mostly visual hallucinations.Alzheimer’s Type Dementia: mostly visual hallucinations.There are lots of conditions that cause hallucinations, of which most are medical but some are psychiatric. Other theories include that hallucinations are the brain interpreting normal visual signals wrong, or that the signals sent to the brain are faulty to begin with. These chemicals are usually present in the brain to transmit signals from one brain cell to another and it is thought that in hallucinations some of these might be found in high levels, or in the wrong place. The most common theories involve chemicals in the brain known as serotonin and dopamine. People are still a little uncertain as to how hallucinations are formed and why they occur, but there are a few theories that seem to each play a part. They are so common that they are considered almost normal and are not dangerous or caused by any medical problem but is especially common in people suffering from narcolepsy. These are known as hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and most people will have these at some point in their life. Some people can have quite vivid hallucinations just before they fall asleep at night as well as in the morning upon waking. Tactile: false perception of touch or other sensation, as from an amputated limb.Auditory: false perceptions of sound, usually voices but occasionally music and other noises most often occurs in psychiatric disorders.These visual hallucinations can be whole objects such as people (known as ‘formed’ hallucinations) or just flashes of light and colours (known as ‘unformed’ images). The most common type of hallucination is a visual hallucination where people see things that are not there. This does not mean that they just have a ‘feeling’ that something is there, but rather than the usual senses we use to interpret the world, such as sight, hearing, taste, touch and small, are malfunctioning in some way. Hallucinations are false sensory perceptions, or ‘sensing’ things that are not there. There are many things that can cause a hallucination and working out the cause is often difficult to achieve in a GP consultation so referral to a specialist is sometimes needed. While many people associate hallucinations with ‘seeing things’, there are also many other types of hallucination which can involve hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling things that are not there. Hallucinations are ‘tricks’ played on the senses on the body, making them sense things that are not there.