Visual release hallucinations presenting as psychosis - a scoping review

Visual release hallucinations are perceptual disturbances that occur in individuals who have experienced vision loss. Almost 50 million people worldwide are believed to experience visual release hallucinations, yet they are profoundly underdiagnosed. Although first described within the Charles Bonnet syndrome, the paradigm underlying this syndrome precludes their consideration in many populations, such as those with underlying psychiatric illness or dementia. Consequently, visual release hallucinations have rarely been studied in patients presenting with psychosis. We conducted a scoping review to determine whether visual-release hallucinations occur in psychotic patients.

The PubMed research database was searched from inception through April 2023. Cases were collected reporting on psychotic patients experiencing suspected visual release hallucinations. Individual treatment courses and responses were extracted.

Thirteen cases compiled from 11 different studies were summarized to provide baseline characteristics and overall trends in treatment response. Most patients did not remit from pharmacological management alone. All patients who received reafferentation therapy remitted, though many were not candidates. Almost half of the patients did not achieve remission.

Visual release hallucinations can manifest in psychosis and may contribute to treatment-resistant psychosis among psychiatric populations. A shift in our understanding of visual release hallucinations may aid their recognition in psychotic patients by shifting the focus toward visual release features. Recognizing release features among patients with hallucinatory conditions may open new treatment avenues for managing patients with psychosis. A preliminary screening index for visual release features is provided to support this shift.