Dysphonia in opera singers due to psychogenic disorders

Abstract

The point of this article is to make a diagnosis of psychological voice disorders easier by reviewing germane to the subject literature. Current view on terminology, classification, clinical manifestation and underlying psychological background of this rare condition is given. Secondly our aim is to asses prevalence ratio of psychological voice disorders in a group of 1520 professional opera singers -people with the most challenging voice effort among professional voice users. Our findings contradict common belief of high occurrence rate of this disorder among opera singers. Characteristics of this professional group are discussed, and a short example case report is described. Based on literature findings and authors personal experience we propose an outline of an assessment protocol when psychological voice disorder is suspected. The importance of multidisciplinary diagnosis involving laryngologist, psychologist, speech therapist and possibly a psychiatrist is pointed out.