Unsolicited reports of voice hearing in the general population: a study using a novel method

ABSTRACT

Understanding the phenomenological range of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), or voice hearing (VH) experiences, is important for developing etiological models. To circumvent potential methodological limitations of previous studies, we used unsolicited online self-reports to examine the kinds of experiences people describe when they say they hear voices. Content analysis was used to examine 499 online posts about VH, the largest VH sample studied to date. Most posters did not report having a psychiatric diagnosis. Unusual bodily sensations and third person voices were less prevalent than in previous studies. Volume of voices was mentioned significantly more often when voices were externally localized, but acoustic qualities were mentioned even when voices were internally localized. Some voice features previously considered atypical, such as unclear voices and voices that are not self-relevant, were described in almost 15% of coded posts. Only 21% described commanding voices, a feature previously considered typical of VH. Individuals sometimes reported voices both consistent with, and inconsistent with, inner speech accounts of VH. These results may have implications for subtyping AVHs. This novel method allowed description of a large sample of self-reports relatively untainted by demand characteristics or social desirability biases.

KEYWORDS:

• Auditory verbal hallucination
• schizophrenia
• psychosis
• social media
• non-clinical
• phenomenology

Acknowledgements

We thank Keren Shemesh for assistance with data coding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.