Carbamazepine in Treatment of Visual Hallucinations: A Case of Chronic Hallucinatory Psychosis

Visual hallucinations are commonly present in various neurological and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and other hallucinatory psychosis. Current conceptualization of hallucinations assume pattern completion model of thalamus to be responsible for the origin of this type of the perceptual abnormality and proposes that central inhibition of such circuits may treat hallucinations. We present a case of chronic hallucinatory psychosis with significantly distressing visual hallucinations, resistant to antipsychotics, which successfully responded to carbamazepine. This case illustrates the novel use of an antiepileptic in the treatment of resistant visual hallucinations. Targeted therapy of this kind can be considered in the future, although more evidence is required in this field.