Charles Bonnet Syndrome is a condition that causes mentally healthy people with vision loss to have complex visual hallucinations. They were first described by Charles Bonnet in 1760 after noting that his elderly grandfather who was nearly blind was experiencing visual hallucinations; he was being visited by visions of people, birds, carriages and buildings, all which were invisible to everyone but himself. It was in the 1930’s that the phenomenon was named after Charles Bonnet in recognition of his work in showing that visual hallucinations secondary to eye disease is different to the hallucinations experienced by those with mental health problems. Charles Bonnet was a Swiss philosopher and writer who wrote about his elderly grandfather who was nearly blind and who had lost his sight to cataracts and later started to have visual hallucinations.
I started to experience “visions” at night about seven months ago; I found this distressing at first and was reluctant to talk to anyone about it and decided to keep quiet about the people and patterns on the wall, etc that I was seeing. It was really strange because what I was seeing was detailed, coloured and clear, much clearer than what I see in my everyday life. At this time I was struggling to cope with the loss of my husband who died at the end of April. The hallucinations and the grief that I was experiencing made me feel that I had no time to be on my own with my thoughts and memories of yesterday. As the visions continued, I found that by blinking at the image, it started to fade and switching my bedside light on have never failed me. The hallucinations have mostly occurred at night, it happens when I wake up and then I see people walking around my bedroom. I know that they are not real and will not hurt me but will admit that I found it a bit distressing at first mainly because I did not comprehend what was happening. Eventually, I went to see my GP who told me that it sounded like CBS and she printed some notes out for me to read when J got back home.
