Auditory verbal hallucinations or hearing voices is not restricted to people who have a form of psychosis. For many, the voices provide support and guidance or have a spiritual aspect
Hearing voices: whats your experience when reading?
Hearing voices is an experience that is very distressing for many people. Voices or auditory verbal hallucinations are one of the most common features of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. But for a small minority of people, voice-hearing is a regular part of their lives, an everyday experience that isnt associated with being unwell. It is only in the past 10 years that we have begun to understand what might be going on in non-clinical voice-hearing.
Most of what we know comes from a large study conducted by Iris Sommer and colleagues at UMC Utrecht in the Netherlands. In 2006 they launched a nationwide attempt to find people who had heard voices before but didnt have any sort of psychiatric diagnosis. From an initial response of over 4,000 people, they eventually identified a sample of 103 who heard voices at least once a month, but didnt have psychosis. Their voice-hearing was also not caused by misuse of drugs or alcohol.
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