What Are Hallucinations?

Take our Your Mental Health Today Test

Find a therapist to treat hallucinations

Schizophrenic and dissociative disorder (DD) auditory hallucinations (AHs) are usually treated differently.

A meta-analysis found avatar therapy to be the most effective psychological treatment for schizophrenic AHs.

Avatar therapy is similar to the way therapists treat distressing dissociative auditory hallucinations.

This similarity suggests schizophrenic and dissociative auditory hallucinations may share common mechanisms.

An auditory hallucination (AH) is the subjective experience of hearing sounds, commonly voices, that are not actually occurring in the environment. While often considered to be synonymous with schizophrenia, AHs actually occur across a range of psychotic and non-psychotic conditions. Present in between 64 and 80 percent of individuals with schizophrenia, they are very common in dissociative disorders (DDs), especially dissociative identity disorder, in complex PTSD, and in certain substance-induced mental states. They are sometimes reported in mood disorders, especially bipolar disorder, as well as borderline personality disorder, and in non-clinical conditions such as bereavement.

Differences Between Schizophrenic and Dissociative Auditory Hallucinations

Hearing auditory hallucinations can be very distressing, especially in schizophrenia and the dissociative disorders. However, there are significant clinical differences between the AHs heard by individuals with schizophrenia and those heard by someone with a dissociative disorder. Hallucinatory voices in schizophrenia are usually perceived as coming from outside of the person and typically are commanding, demanding, critical, or threatening. The number and source of the voices are often ambiguous and often associated with delusions about their origin—e.g., that they come from someone who is broadcasting their thoughts, or from CIA-directed radio waves. Schizophrenic patients frequently do not have insight into their hallucinatory nature, but regard their AHs as real.

Dissociative disorder auditory hallucinations are more often experienced as internalized voices, with distinct and persistent identities and personality attributes........

© Psychology Today