Prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations in a general population: A group comparison study

Abstract

The present study was specifically designed to investigate the prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in the general population, and sought to compare similarities and differences regarding socio‐demographics, mental health and severe life events between individuals who have never experienced AVH with those who had. The study also aimed to compare those who sought professional help for their experience of AVH with those who had not sought help. Through a postal questionnaire, 2,533 participants ages 18 and over from a national survey completed the Launay‐Slade Hallucinations Scale and other measures examining AVH characteristics and other areas related to AVH. In total, 7.3% of the sample reported a life‐time prevalence of AVH. Those with AVH were more likely to be single and unemployed, reported higher levels of depression and anxiety, and experienced a higher number of severe life events compared with those without AVH. Only 16% of those who experienced AVH in the general population sought professional help for these experiences. Compared to those who did not seek professional help, participants that had were more likely to experience AVH with a negative content, experience them on a daily basis, undergo negative reactions when experiencing AVH, and resist AVH. In conclusion, the prevalence of AVH was found to be relatively high. The results also revealed higher levels of reduced mental health for individuals who sought professional help, followed by those who did not, compared with those who had never experienced AVH.

Auditory verbal hallucinations and continuum models of psychosis: A systematic review of the healthy voice-hearer literature

“…HVHs heard significantly fewer negative evaluative comments about themselves, including their own thoughts (Honig et al, 1998), but heard significantly more comments evaluating others. This was also reported in the larger sample of Kråkvik et al (2015), where HVHs were less likely to hear voices commenting on them. Whilst there was no difference in commanding voices, CVHs were more compliant with and swayed by commands.…”

“…However, Kråkvik et al (2015) did not find a significant difference in age of onset between CVHs and HVHs.…”

“…Leudar et al (1997) reported that both CVHs and HVHs are addressed by voices directly, and voices commonly sound like individuals known to the voice-hearers; whilst voices in the clinical group are more frequently those of public figures or supernatural characters, HVHs are more likely to identify voices as similar to themselves or family members (Leudar et al, 1997). However, Kråkvik et al (2015) found no differences in the voice identities reported by CVHs and HVHs. Further, Sorrell et al (2010) reported that gender and identity of AVHs does not appear to differ between groups.…”

Affective Politics, Debility and Hearing Voices: Towards a Feminist Politics of Ordinary Suffering

“…Hearing voices is now recognized as occurring transdiagnostically, including in people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorders, and borderline personality disorder (5). It is also found outside of psychiatric contexts, with a low single digit percentage of the general population having extended voice-hearing experiences without meeting criteria for psychiatric diagnoses (6,7), evidencing that the experience is not necessarily associated with dysfunction or impairment. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the development of an influential movement of voice-hearers and their allies, the Hearing Voices Movement (HVM), solidified voice-hearing not only as an important research topic, but as a social and civil rights issue (8).…”

Reduced gray matter volume of left superior temporal gyrus in schizophrenia with auditory verbal hallucinations: a voxel-based morphometry study

“…The life-time prevalence was about 7.25% in general population, and the age of the highest prevalence rate was less than 30 years and 1.1% of individual sought professional help for AVHs [1]. AVHs which was the core psychopathology symptom affected about 60-80% schizophrenia patients and caused amounts of distress, functional disability and behavioral dys-control [2,3].…”