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layna2 Asked January 2019

Curious. Do people with Alzheimer's think they're being kidnapped by loved ones?

Hi.


I have a question and don't mean to offend anyone. I saw a video on facebook of a son asking his mother if she knew who he was. She didn't. She was calm and just eating icecream and drinking coffee and lounging around, but had no idea who he was. It was heartbreaking.


I've read that people with alzheimers can be combative, but are there cases where they are combative because they think a loved one is kidnapping them? Like making a scene and stuff?

layna2 Jan 2019
Wow. Thank you both for your quick answer. How scary for all parties involved.

Ahmijoy Jan 2019
The first rule of Alzheimer’s and dementia is that there are no rules. People with this disease can hallucinate anything. My mother would become combative when she felt threatened. Hallucinating that you are being kidnapped is absolutely threatening. My mother hallucinated that her roommate was a man because the woman had short hair, so she slapped her. When they aren’t feeling threatened, they can absolutely seem very calm and rational about what they are saying. My mother explained in a very calm, reasonable and earnest voice that they had moved her entire facility, brick and mortar included, to Russia overnight.

Depending on the particular hallucination and their state of mind, so to speak, they can absolutely make a scene and it was the “stuff”, like hitting people, that landed her in the lockdown unit.

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Tothill Jan 2019
Yes. A very good friend of my Mum was diagnosed with Alz, around age 60. She over time attacked her husband as she no longer knew him, called the police, accused him of attempting to rape her and more. She locked him out of the house, went after him with a knife. It got really scary. Unfortunately her husband was one of the 40% who die before the person they are caregiving. He had stomach cancer. She lived in a nursing home for another 20 years before dying in her 80's.

Her decline from forgetfulness, showing up for lunch when no lunch was planned, driving to someones house, but no knowing why etc, to violence was rapid. Within 2 years of diagnosis. It was in the 1980s when there wasn't much info on ALZ and I do not think any medication offered.

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