Q: I just read your column in the May 3 Western Producer. I am 31 now, but a similar thing happened to me when I was 16. I heard footsteps and believed there was someone in my basement bedroom.
I was going through a particularly difficult time then, so I’m not sure my family was taking my complaint seriously. One day, after this had gone on for a while, my mother was in the basement and saw our cat jump up from the deep freeze and into a hole in the suspended ceiling. He was running around on top of the suspended ceiling panels in the basement, over my room, mainly at night when there was no one awake in the house for him to play with.
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Had my parents asked me at that time if I was on drugs, or accused me of being schizophrenic or hallucinating, I would not have reacted well.
There are often simple answers to confusing problems, and it is always all right to treat teenagers with respect first.
A:I agree that a person should always check out the situation to see if it is actually true before assuming that it is a hallucination. A hallucination, by definition, is a false perception. The cat was very real.
Likewise, a delusion is a false belief out of keeping with the person’s religious or cultural upbringing. For example, in Haiti, no one would be surprised if you believed in voodoo. In this country, you would be considered a little strange.
Sometimes there appears to be a fine line between religious beliefs and delusions. I have come across various psychiatric patients who thought they were important beings. On one occasion, I had Jesus Christ and the Devil sitting in my waiting room at the same time. On the other hand, one of my schizophrenic patients told me that he had come into a large fortune. No one believed him at the time, but it turned out to be true.
