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Hearing voices: explanations and implications.

Jennifer Boyd Ritsher·Alicia Lucksted·Poorni G Otilingam·Monica Grajales
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Abstract

Integrating information on voice hearing from multiple disciplines and perspectives, we review current explanatory models and their implications for intervention strategies. Far from always signifying a mental illness, voice hearing may result from other causes, including drug side effects, brain lesions, and culturally-sanctioned phenomena. Accordingly, a wide range of assessment, intervention, and self-management strategies are available and appropriate. We conclude that by offering a diversity of treatment options, eliciting patients' causal theories, and incorporating these into an individualized treatment strategy, clinicians are likely to help clients control the distressing aspects of the voices, minimize stigma and discrimination, and make meaning of the experience.

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Adaptation, PsychologicalBereavementFunctional LateralityHallucinationsHearing DisordersHumansPsychotropic DrugsSpiritualityStress, PsychologicalTemporal LobeJournal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tResearch Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

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Jennifer Boyd Ritsher, Alicia Lucksted, Poorni G Otilingam, Monica Grajales. 2004. Hearing voices: explanations and implications.. https://doi.org/10.2975/27.2004.219.227

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