Have you ever heard something that others didn’t hear – like someone calling your name? Hearing voices or other sounds that should not there is very common. ABOUT 10% of individuals report having experienced auditory hallucinations sooner or later of their lives.
The experience of hearing voices can vary greatly from individual to individual and may change over time. These may be the voices of somebody familiar or unknown. There may be many voices or only one or two. They can be loud or as quiet as a whisper.
For some people, these experiences are positive. They may represent a spiritual or supernatural experience Welcome or a comforting presence. But for others, these experiences are disturbing. The voices may be intrusive, negative, critical or threatening. Difficult voices can make an individual feel anxious, scared, embarrassed or frustrated. They can also make it difficult to pay attention, be around other people, and interfere with on a regular basis activities.
While not everyone who hears voices has mental health problems, such experiences are rather more common in individuals who do. They were considered a characteristic symptom of schizophrenia, which affects approx 24 million people worldwide.
However, such experiences are also common with other mental health problems, particularly mood and trauma-related disorders (reminiscent of bipolar disorder or depression AND post-traumatic stress disorder), where as much as half of individuals may experience them.
Why do people hear voices?
It’s not clear why people hear voices, but they’re exposed to them long-term stress, injury Or depression can increase your probabilities.
Some research suggests that the brains of people that hear voices may be “wired” in another way, especially between the hearing and speaking parts of the brain. It may mean parts of ours inner speech can be perceived as external voices. So the thought “you are useless” when something goes flawed can be seen as an outsider saying these words.
Other research suggests that it can have to do with the way in which our brains use past experiences as a template to make sense of the world and predict it. Sometimes these templates can be so strong that they result in errors in the way in which we experience what is happening around us, including hearing things that our brain “expects” moderately than what is actually happening.
It’s clear that when people tell us they hear voices, they really do! Their brain perceives vocal experiences as if someone were speaking within the room. We could consider this “error” as acting like a susceptibility to common optical tricks visual illusions.
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Dealing with hearing voices
When hearing voices becomes an obstacle in life, treatment guidelines recommend using medications. However, a few third of individuals will experience constant anxiety. Therefore, treatment guidelines also recommend using psychological therapies reminiscent of cognitive behavioral therapy.
The next generation psychological therapies are starting to make use of digital technologies, and virtual reality is a promising recent medium.
Avatar therapy allows an individual to create a virtual representation of a voice or voices that appears and sounds identical to they experience it. This can help people regain power of their “relationship” when interacting with a voice character, supported by a therapist.
Jason’s experience
Jason (not his real name), 53, has struggled with persistent voices since he was twenty. Antipsychotic medications helped him to some extent through the years, but he still heard disturbing voices. As a part of a research trial, Jason tried avatar therapy.
At first he was unable to withstand the voices, but slowly gained confidence and, with the support of his therapist, tested alternative ways of responding to the avatar and the voices.
Jason became more in a position to set boundaries, reminiscent of not listening to them for certain periods of the day. He also felt more in a position to query what they said and make his own selections.
Over the course of several months, Jason began to experience day by day interruptions to the voices, and his relationship with them began to alter. They were now not like tyrants, but more like critical friends, declaring things he might need considered or been aware of.
HekaVR, CC BY-ND
Gaining recognition
After promising results abroad and elsewhere recommendations by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, our team began adapting the therapy to Australian conditions.
We are trial providing avatar therapy conducted by our specialist voice clinic via telehealth. We are also testing whether avatar therapy is more practical than the currently standard voice hearing therapy based on cognitive behavioral therapy.
As only A minority individuals with psychosis receive specialist psychological therapy for hearing voices, we hope our study will help scale up these recent treatments to make them more routinely available across the country.