Health and Psychology

"I see dead people. So I'm schizophrenic."  Not since The 6th Sense or some of the Medium programs on television and the movies have so many people been talking about visual hallucinations and illusions.  I have seldom seen visual hallucinations correctly evaluated or identified.

So to all those people equating visual hallucinations with schizophrenia...you're wrong.  Very seldom does schizophrenia present with visual hallucinations, and the type that does has some very specific images associated with it.  Estimates of schizophrenics with visual hallucinations and other symptoms of psychosis are around 16%.  Visual hallucinations alone are NOT a symptom of schizophrenia.  The vast majority of hallucinations associated with mental illness are auditory hallucinations not visual hallucinations. Visual hallucinations are related to a wide variety of medical and neurological conditions.  These include:

• Substance use and abuse
• Sleep disturbance
• Brain tumors
• Seizures
• Medication side effects
• Delirium
• Visual loss
• Migraines
• Cortical blindness
• Parkinson's disease
• Stroke
• Metabolic disturbances
• Reported psychic phenomena
• Visual illusions reported as hallucinations
• Visual flashbacks of trauma
• Symptoms following concussion