My mother suffers from night terrors and cries out for help until 3 am. How can I help her?

my mother 93years old,has lived with my family for 39 yrs. My husband is a saint! Now, its just the 3 of us. recently, she broke her hip & had partial hip replacement surgery.She was in rehab/nursing home for 21 days. She has been home a couple of days and is afraid to go to sleep,cries out in fear and talks almost all night. I try to comfort her. The dr. gave her meds to sleep which is not working. do you think this will pass when she gets more familiar with beeing home again? also, she has dementia/alzheimers.

I do think sometimes complete darkness is hard for those with dementia or alzheimers disease... Nightlights are wonderful!!!

I would encourage you to get a medication for your Mom to help her rest!!! I am not a big advocate of "snowing" people... however she does need to rest and so do you!!! God bless, J

WE have started giving my mother, who has Alzheimer's, GABA 500mg at night. You can purchase it at most health food stores and even some pharmacys. GABA is natural to you body. She no longer is suffering from the nightly bad dreams and is not as iritated during the day. Take some for yourself as well. It just calms the brain and you don't feel like you have been medicated in the morning.

There are specific medications for night terrors. See your neurologist for this.
Be very careful with all meds that affect the brain. Go with Melatonin for now until you receive a specific diagnosis.

Sleep meds often don't work on frail older people--my MIL during her last few months of lung cancer would lay awake at night and cry out that she wanted to die. The dr tried every sleeping pill in the book and nothing worked. He told us that what she could face during and day and what they were at 3am were totally different. We finally had family members take turns staying with her at night.

If she has Alz's it could be sundowners. They get worse when the sun goes down. Ask your doc. for something to help her sleep. And calm her down. It is not good for her or you to be up all night.

I find the regular Ambien works better than the Ambien CR. Yes, both of you need to sleep. Talk with her doctor.

Here's what we did with my grandfather - no food 2 hours before bed time, ensure that he had good glass of water with supper, leave the bathroom light on or a small light on the table across the room. Tho he didn't complain of indigestion during this period, he suffered from it all his life so Mom suspected it was a problem for him. He would often wake up a time or two, go to the bathroom but when the light was on he was generally okay.

nightlights noise like a tv or radio on low so not to scare them. The tv on low can be a nightlight and a little noise at the same time.