Hearing voices: explanations and implications.
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.
Center for Health Care Evaluation, US Department of Veterans Affairs California, San Francisco 94121, USA. ritsher@itsa.ucsf.edu
Jennifer Boyd
JB
Ritsher
Alicia
A
Lucksted
Poorni G
PG
Otilingam
Monica
M
Grajales
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001601:Bereavement; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006212:Hallucinations / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000150:complications; D006801:Humans; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000009:adverse effects; D029181:Spirituality; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology
D011619:Psychotropic Drugs