Periods of their lives, and this adversity is often reflected in the identity Hallucinations is often, but not always, rooted in traumatic early experience.Īlmost all of our patients have experienced significant adversity for extended University of Sussex, United Kingdom, adds, “The cause of auditory Mark Hayward, PhD,ĭClinPsy, director of research and honorary senior research fellow at the Some focus on events that happened to the person, 2 whereas othersįocus on brain changes less clearly linked to life events. McCarthy-Jones, there are many theories as to what causes people to hear voices: HIV Independently Associated With Mortality in Schizophrenia.Abnormal Right Frontal Gyrus Gray Matter Volume in Early Schizophrenia.Long-Term Cognitive Decline Found in Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses.Most commonly though, people diagnosed with schizophrenia will hear multiple voices that are male, nasty, repetitive, commanding, and interactive, where the person can ask the voice a question and get some kind of answer.” It can involve hearing single or multiple voices, whose identity the hearer may or may not know, who speak in turn or all at the same time, who may be saying new things or repeating what has been heard before, and who can give comments or commands, insults or encouragement. According to Simon McCarthy-Jones, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, “Hearing voices is a varied experience. It is also seen in other psychiatric conditions, such as bipolar and unipolarĭepression and personality disorders, as well as in nonclinical populations.Īuditory hallucinations in schizophrenia are heterogenous in nature. Symptoms of schizophrenia, reported by as many as 75% of patients. Hallucinations, or “hearing voices,” is one of the most prevalent