Hallucinations tormented the mind of a 58-year-old woman, keeping her from leaving her bathroom in her flat in Jurong West for two and a half years, reported The New Paper (TNP).
From 25 March in 2009, 58-year-old Leong Mee Yan mainly sat naked on the toilet bowl, and slept and ate there, the paper said.
It was only on 13 September last year that her husband Ong Kian Ann, who is unemployed, decided to call the police and ambulance, it reported.
Leong was later admitted into the Institute of Mental Health (IMH)where she stayed for 18 days.
When asked why it took a while for Ong to seek assistance, he toldTNP that whenever he tried to get his wife to leave the bathroom, she would refuse because a “force” was holding her down.
Ong was also reported by the paper as saying that the hallucinationsbegan affecting his wife in 1991, after one of her sisters demanded for more money. It was not reported further what the issue was about.
Since treatment at IMH, her condition has improved and bathroom visits now last around one or two hours, he told the same paper.
Psychologist Daniel Koh of Insights Mind Centre told Yahoo! Singapore that a person suffering from mental disorders such as schizophrenia or psychosis may experience hallucinations or delusions, especially when the illness is not treated in its early stages.
He highlighted that a person under extreme stress or pressure can also experience hallucinations, which can be categorised as auditory, visual and tactile.
Under auditory hallucination, one can hear voices telling one to act or do certain things, including inflicting harm to one’s self. In visual hallucination, the person tends to see things being thrown at or a person harassing him or her. For tactile hallucination, the person can smell or feel certain things, for example, insects crawling on them, even though none are.
Koh said that family members can also keep a lookout for signs of hallucinations, which is apparent when the person’s behaviour starts to change from its usual self, like when they become easily frightened, tend to panic or show great distress.
On the other hand, they can also turn passive or quiet, which also indicates that their mental condition might not be stable.
As such, undergoing treatment earlier is the best option as the chances of recovery are higher, but a delayed treatment, warned Koh, might result the condition to worsen or become more concrete.
FROM YAHOO! SINGAPORE-NEWS
*back into the abyss of death*
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