In general when we hear that someone is hearing voices, we believe that the person is experiencing a psychotic episode. Psychosis is a break from reality and not knowing what’s real and not real. Usually hearing voices, also called auditory hallucinations doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can get them as a part of a depressive episode or a manic episode. And you can also see them with the psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.
Another scenario where you can hear voices is when you have certain medical problems like being in a temporary state of intoxication from a drug or alcohol, being delirious, or having seizures or migraines.
But there are people who have no medical problems whatsoever and still hear voices. It’s estimated that 1 – 3% of people with no psychiatric disorder hear voices. Researchers have seen differences between pathological voices and non-pathological voices.
In this video I discuss these differences and also discuss other situations of hearing voices such as with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and sleep paralysis.
References
Baumeister D, Sedgwick O, Howes O, Peters E. Auditory verbal hallucinations and continuum models of psychosis: A systematic review of the healthy voice-hearer literature. Clin Psychol Rev. 2017;51:125–141.
Vanessa Beavan, John Read & Claire Cartwright (2011) The prevalence of voice-hearers in the general population: A literature review, Journal of Mental Health, 20:3, 281-292,
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