A rare brain disorder made woman see dragons: How doctors diagnosed and treated the condition

Imagine seeing dragon faces everywhere instead of humans! A similar incident happened in The Hague and the case was brought to light in 2011. "In July, 2011, a 52-year-old woman presented to our psychiatric outpatient clinic in The Hague with a life-long history of seeing people's faces change into dragon-like faces and hallucinating similar faces many times a day.

She could perceive and recognise actual faces, but after several minutes they turned black, grew long, pointy ears and a protruding snout, and displayed a reptiloid skin and huge eyes in bright yellow, green, blue, or red. She saw similar dragon-like faces drifting towards her many times a day from the walls, electrical sockets, or the computer screen, in both the presence and absence of face-like patterns, and at night she saw many dragon-like faces in the dark," as per the case report published in the Lancet in 2014."During her childhood the faces had not bothered her, but in early adolescence they became more prominent and she realised that this was not how other people saw each other's faces. She felt isolated, became depressed, and abused alcohol for many years," it adds.

What had happened to her?

She was diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsias.Prosopometamorphopsia is a pretty rare and unusual neurological condition where people see other faces as distorted or weirdly changed.

Imagine looking at someone, but their face seems blurry, stretched, drooping, or even twisted like a cartoon or sometimes scary—like a “demon face.” The crazy thing is that the people around look totally normal to others, but for someone with prosopometamorphopsia, faces just don’t look right.This condition is different from prosopagnosia, which is when people have trouble recognizing faces at all. In prosopometamorphopsia, people can recognize who they’re looking at, but the faces appear warped or oddly shaped.

Sometimes the distortion is on the whole face; other times, it's just one side. It’s a bit like seeing faces through a funhouse mirror that only you notice.

Prosopometamorphopsia symptoms generally include:

These symptoms can come and go, sometimes worsening with stress, fatigue, or certain lighting conditions. Besides the visual changes, people often feel anxious or scared because the faces don’t look right, which can make social interactions stressful and lead to avoidance behaviors."We provided psychoeducation, stopped all her previous medication, and started 300 mg of valproic acid daily. She had symptom-free days for the first time in her life but developed an auditory sleep start (loud bangs heard several hours after falling asleep) so we changed valproic acid to 3 mg of rivastigmine daily, which reduced the frequency of auditory symptoms and kept visual symptoms sufficiently under control for her to function normally.

She has remained in the same job for the past 3 years and her interaction with colleagues is greatly improved," the doctors have said in the report.