BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Experiences of hearing voices: analysis of a novel phenomenological survey

    Woods, A. and Jones, N. and Alderson-Day, B. and Callard, Felicity and Fernyhough, C. (2015) Experiences of hearing voices: analysis of a novel phenomenological survey. The Lancet Psychiatry 2 (4), pp. 323-331. ISSN 2215-0366.

    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    20402.pdf - Published Version of Record
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

    Download (106kB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Background: Auditory hallucinations—or voices—are a common feature of many psychiatric disorders and are also experienced by individuals with no psychiatric history. Understanding of the variation in subjective experiences of hallucination is central to psychiatry, yet systematic empirical research on the phenomenology of auditory hallucinations remains scarce. We aimed to record a detailed and diverse collection of experiences, in the words of the people who hear voices themselves. Methods: We made a 13 item questionnaire available online for 3 months. To elicit phenomenologically rich data, we designed a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions, which drew on service-user perspectives and approaches from phenomenological psychiatry, psychology, and medical humanities. We invited people aged 16–84 years with experience of voice-hearing to take part via an advertisement circulated through clinical networks, hearing voices groups, and other mental health forums. We combined qualitative and quantitative methods, and used inductive thematic analysis to code the data and χ2 tests to test additional associations of selected codes. Findings: Between Sept 9 and Nov 29, 2013, 153 participants completed the study. Most participants described hearing multiple voices (124 [81%] of 153 individuals) with characterful qualities (106 [69%] individuals). Less than half of the participants reported hearing literally auditory voices—70 (46%) individuals reported either thought-like or mixed experiences. 101 (66%) participants reported bodily sensations while they heard voices, and these sensations were significantly associated with experiences of abusive or violent voices (p=0·024). Although fear, anxiety, depression, and stress were often associated with voices, 48 (31%) participants reported positive emotions and 49 (32%) reported neutral emotions. Our statistical analysis showed that mixed voices were more likely to have changed over time (p=0·030), be internally located (p=0·010), and be conversational in nature (p=0·010). Interpretation: This study is, to our knowledge, the largest mixed-methods investigation of auditory hallucination phenomenology so far. Our survey was completed by a diverse sample of people who hear voices with various diagnoses and clinical histories. Our findings both overlap with past large-sample investigations of auditory hallucination and suggest potentially important new findings about the association between acoustic perception and thought, somatic and multisensorial features of auditory hallucinations, and the link between auditory hallucinations and characterological entities.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Social Research, Birkbeck Institute for (BISR)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 01 Jun 2015 13:05
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:37
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/20402

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    262Downloads
    6 month trend
    120Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item