How do you calm a loved one’s irrational fears & anxieties?

That was a difficult time and we went through some hard things, but thinking about it now, I think reaching out to his neurologist and making changes in his medication helped the best to settle him down. His night time meds make him sleepy so along with his CPAP machine he now, thankfully, sleeps through the night. We still sometimes have some issues during the day but nothing like the night time fears.

@labrown

We increased George's Remeron but it still did not effectively control his anxiety. We recently added Lorazepam. What does your hubby take at night, and how much?

George's Wife, My husband takes his Memantine (generic for Namenda) 10 mg nightly and he takes an antipsychotic, Risperidone .50 mg. He also takes the Risperidone .25 mg in the a.m. That has helped with the serious agitation, hallucinations, and delusions a lot. That along with his CPAP machine helps him to sleep through the night. He still whispers and talks about "people" being in the house when they are not, and hides everything he owns, but the fear and anxiety over that is not as severe as it has been. He also takes Sertraline 100 mg daily to help take the edge off. He was taking Memantine a.m. and p.m. but I read that can contribute to hallucinations so I talked with his neurologist and he agreed to cut that back to once daily. Frankly, I don't think it helps, so we will probably stop that altogether. He wears a 24/7 patch, Rivastigmine, that is also suppose to help with the memory loss and mental changes, but I don't really see that helping either.He could not take the Donepezil it made him very sick. It's been trial and error with the antipsychotics. He tried the Seroquel first before the Risperidone, but that didn't help at all. We seem to be in a good place for now.

Namenda gave my mom bad dreams so we stopped it.

Best thing to calm her when sundowners kicked in was to let her know I understood her so she felt heard. "Yes, that sounds scary or irritating, etc". Reflect & divert.

Also, hospice changed her meds several times. What works may stop working. She would stay somewhat stable for a while.

Sometimes physical pain makes it worse and she couldn't express if or where she hurt but she showed some signs. A pain patch helped (she was spitting out pills so they used a patch). This seemed to help a lot for a while.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot that really helps. Hang in there.

After I described Sandra's anger, delusionss, and wandering, her neurologist prescribed citalopram 10 mg Tab (CELEXA), once daily. He said it would take about two weeks to make a difference. She has become significantly better and more passive.