Do you have hallucinations?

If you see weird images, don't worry, you are not mentally ill or having dementia. It is actually your brain trying to make sense of the images sent to your brain, as a result of the damaged eyes. Experts call it the Charles Bonnet Syndrome - a purely medical condition.

Charles Bonnet (above) is the Swiss naturalist who first mentioned this syndrome in the 18th century.

In Britain, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists is issuing new guidelines to all eye specialists to explain the condition. This is to ensure that eye patients are correctly diagnosed and not sent for psychiatric treatment.

"People have been sent for psychiatric treatment as if they were beginning to suffer symptoms of dementia," Tom Bremridge, of the Macular Disease Society of UK, told the BBC.

"And no-one, neither the doctor nor the patient, knew that these were symptoms of macular degeneration. But it really is quite common and very distressing for people.

"Doctors will tell people they have an eye condition, what it is and what the result is as far as their vision is concerned, but they haven't considered the psychological effects - and especially hallucinations."

Dr Dominic Ffytche, a leading psychiatric specialist in the syndrome, said: "This is a very important new development. These hallucinations are often an unexpected consequence of the loss of vision, so the more knowledge that is out there the more patients will be able to talk about the phenomena and hopefully relieve the distress that they cause."

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Charles Bonnet syndrome: It is named after the Swiss naturalist who described the condition in 1760. He first documented it in his 89-year-old grandfather, nearly blind from cataracts, who saw men, women, birds, carriages, buildings, tapestries and scaffolding patterns.