Clinical dimensions of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenic disorders.
BACKGROUND
Auditory hallucinations occupy, along with delusional beliefs, the center stage of active or "positive" psychotic clinical psychopathology. During the last decade, several sets of auditory hallucinations' clinical features were subjected to multivariate statistical analyses to disclose major dimensions of psychotic patients' overall hallucinatory experience and behavior. However, these studies failed, to a large extent, to provide satisfactory external validations of the thereby extracted factors.


METHODS
We investigated the major clinical dimensions of verbal auditory hallucinations in a sample of 100 inpatients with schizophrenic disorders. Patients (61 men and 39 women) were examined before the initiation of antipsychotic treatment and their assessment included 18 major clinical features of auditory hallucinations. Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Global Assessment Scale, and Mini-Mental State Examination were used as external validators.


RESULTS
Principal component analysis resulted in the extraction of 5 factors interpreted as the dimensions of severity of auditory hallucinations, emotional and behavioral impact, rate of their intrusion in self-consciousness, delusional elaboration, and similarity to ordinary auditory perception, respectively. The second and third factors extracted in our study correlated with short duration of illness, whereas the first, fourth, and fifth ones correlated with chronicity. Our second factor correlated with clinical severity of patients' current mental state, the fifth factor with severity of their cognitive impairment, and the first and fourth ones with lower clinical depression despite patients' chronicity.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings of our study contribute to the further elucidation of the major clinical dimensions of auditory hallucinations and the testing of their external validity.
Oulis
Panagiotis
P
Department of Psychiatry, University of Athens, Eginition Hospital, 11528 Athens, Greece. oulisp@med.uoa.gr
Gournellis
Rossetos
R
Konstantakopoulos
George
G
Matsoukas
Thomas
T
Michalopoulou
Panagiota G
PG
Soldatos
Constantin
C
Lykouras
Lefteris
L
D000328:Adult; D010054:Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006212:Hallucinations / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index