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Mumbling, whispers, or indistinct conversations or laughter.Ĭlients whose auditory hallucinations went on to become distinct voices have told me that in the early stages this was more like whispering or several people talking at once. This is more pronounced if the left ear has less hearing ability than the right.įor this reason and a bunch of others, seniors are getting prescribed a lot of sedating antipsychotic medication. One research study I read recently reported that an imbalance in hearing between the two ears increases the risk that sounds will be miss-attributed. Non-word sounds are more commonly heard by seniors, which does not automatically mean they are developing a psychotic condition. Hearing issues, tinnitus, and hearing loss have similar symptoms. For some people, this progresses and for others, it does not. People who later develop distinct voices sometimes have told me that the “voices” began as indistinct humming or tapping sounds. Auditory hallucinations have been described in many ways and this list is far from inclusive. Here are some of the possible auditory hallucinations that have been reported by both clinical and non-clinical populations. Young children, especially those who have been under stress or traumatized, can begin to hear voices. Those hearing voices report varying degrees of ability to control the voices.Ī person hearing voices may develop unique or special relationships with the voices for good or bad. Voices or other sounds can vary in intensity. The voice can vary in frequency from one time only to constant running commentary that never stops. The experience of having an auditory hallucination has many personal features. Clinicians may refer to a client as “internally preoccupied” and the presumption is that the client is listening to voices but they may also be lost in thought or because of concussions or dementia be unable to think coherently.
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This more “objective” evidence of auditory hallucinations based on professional’s observations is subjective and involves a lot of guesswork and inferences. More information is coming in from brain scans but it will be some time before this begins to be widely used for diagnosis. We, as in counselors, can rely on the reports of those who hear them or we can have observers who see people they believe are having auditory hallucinations describe how this is affecting the person who presumably is hearing voices. Since part of the definition of auditory hallucinations is that they are heard by one person and not others we have only two sources of information most of the time. We have limited information on what these auditory hallucinations are like.Īuditory hallucinations are very individual experiences. Leaving out religious or supernatural interpretations here, you have just had an “auditory hallucination.” If you hear an indistinct sound, your brain is likely to interpret this sound as something familiar, like your own name. Say you are sitting at a table eating lunch and then you think you hear someone calling your name. Mistaking one sound for another is a type of auditory hallucination. In children and adolescents and then again among the elderly these auditory hallucinations type “hearing voices” are common enough that we are inclined to think this is a normal developmental event. At several times in the human lifespan, this is so common that it appears normal. Hearing voices or other sounds and then finding out that others did not hear what you heard, happens more often than most people realize. Some of these events are easily explained and other sound events are reasons to suspect a long-term mental illness is present. Since these auditory events can vary so much it may be useful to consider some types of auditory hallucinations, “hearing voices” as the auditory hallucinations are often referred to, and we can see just how different these auditory hallucinations might be. Their question got me thinking that all those things that get referred to as “auditory hallucinations” can be quite different experiences. What that reader was asking about was, voices that speak in the first, second, or third person, a very different discussion from what we are talking about here. Originally this question came in from a reader who asked about types of voices. Hearing voices or sounds that no one else hears occurs in people both with and without a diagnosable mental illness. Photo courtesy of How many types of auditory hallucinations are there?