Intensive Care = PTSD?

[homo hirsutus]

A recent study (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24409435/). I'm not really sure what it means, but it seems really scary. Maybe one of you can explain it a bit better.

But one in three children reported delusional memories, including hallucinations. Children in this group scored far higher on the screening test for post traumatic stress disorder than others.

“One saw and felt scorpions crawling over his arms and legs. He reported that these lasted two or three days over which period the scorpions gradually became more transparent. He had been in a road accident but described the hallucinations as more frightening than the accident,” Colville said.

“Another child saw a bleeding cat on the ceiling and was convinced her mother had been replaced by an impostor with a funny voice.”


Apparently hallucinations among adults in ICU are common as well. I don't get it.

[thirteen]

Wow, that's scary. The study claims that the PTSD is being triggered by the delusions and hallucinations the children suffer after being sedated for 2+ days, as opposed to developing PTSD from the procedures/tests being performed. This (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080501/kids_hallucinations_080501/20080501?hub=Health) article says that the delusions and hallucinations are similar to those reported by heroin users.

... They found that the delusions and hallucinations the kids were reporting were not unlike those experienced by adult intensive care patients and heroin users.

[Little One-Eyed Wench]

I had a patient who had been in the ICU. She told me that she hallucinated that she had been kidnapped and was being tortured.

I don't have time to read the study, but I have heard that the atmosphere of ICU is to blame as well. There is no daytime or nighttime - lights on 24 hours a day. Also, you have all the noise of the monitor alarms going off, IV's beeping, overhead paging, people coming into your room at all hours for various treatments. There is no true rest in an ICU.

For someone who is already badly injured and traumatized this situation can make things even worse.

[Kim o the Concrete Jungle]

Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations. But the heavy sedation thing makes sense as well.

The ICU room my dad was in the Christmas before last was just the same as all the other rooms in the hospital -- only with fewer beds, so they could fit in all the extra equipment. It had a window. But I guess that would vary from hospital to hospital.

The thing that freaked him out most about being there was watching the guy in the other bed across from him pretty much dying right in front of him. So he was really glad when they sent him back to the regular ward.

The "no true rest" thing, I think, is fairly typical of hospital in general. When I had my knee done, I found myself lying there in the small hours of the morning with my headphones on, listening to music, because the guy in the bed next to me was having a rough time of it and the staff were working on him all night.

[homo hirsutus]

I know the few times I've gone more than a day without sleeping I started having hallucinations, no scorpions or bleeding cats, mostly just seeing stuff in motion which I knew was sitting still. I can definitely see how that would mess with you though, especially with kids who rarely have what's going on explained to them.

It makes me really sad cause my grandma spent almost three months in ICU before she died, it was sad at the time, but reading this makes it worse.

[Ana H]

this info is disturbing. Elly was on morphine, high doses, for the last 2 months of her life. I always wondered what she may be seeing, and if we seemed scary to her.

[BeaverIslander]

From the nature of the hallucinations described, they almost sound like opiate withdrawal symptoms ... or perhaps opiates not consistently applied and monitored. I'm guessing based on what two heroin addict acquaintances have told me, and the withdrawal scenes in Trainspotting and Requiem For A Dream.