What causes so many psychiatric patients to hear voices?

looney_tunes

"So many' is hard to pin down. If your awareness of psychiatric disorders is based on popular television and movie depictions ,you will see a lot more instances than is the case in the 'real' world, because it is such an easy symptom to portray dramatically and convey the idea of mental illness. "Hearing voices" is a common, but not universal, symptom of schizophrenia. Many other psychiatric disorders can be equally crippling, without including auditory hallucinations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder There is ongoing debate as to whether the source of these 'voices' is biochemical or experiential. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/27/2668099.htm http://www.intervoiceonline.org/2006/11/30/psychiatry-and-hearing-voices Feb 26 10, 2:16 AM

satguru

One theory is they attribute their own thought to outside rather than inside. http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=180871 It is curious though how many seem to share similar evil commands and insults, these are not anecdotal as I work with some of them and they are absolutely accurate. I don't think there's been much research into the actual content and really should be if not. Feb 26 10, 10:37 AM

Baloo55th

Something that's rarely appended to these studies is the little voices supposedly same people also experience - "Go on, another cream cake won't kill you". Most people who are not in psychiatric care can recognise these and make rather more level-headed decisions - "No, I've already had two" or "I've had one, and I didn't have breakfast; should be OK" and so on. At the cream cake level, this is regarded as the voice of temptation. At the knife in hand behind the tree level, it's treated as psychosis. The indications of evil intent are not only in humans. My family had a Peke that would accept a bit of meat from a hand, take it gently and lay it down, then bite the fingers hard - and then pick up the meat again and eat it. In a human, the equivalent would probably indicate a rather psychotic individual. Feb 26 10, 12:56 PM