title: Tailoring Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Subtypes of Voice-Hearing.
abstract: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for voice-hearing (i.e., auditory verbal hallucinations; AVH) has, at best, small to moderate effects. One possible reason for this limited efficacy is that current CBT approaches tend to conceptualize voice-hearing as a homogenous experience in terms of the cognitive processes involved in AVH. However, the highly heterogeneous nature of voice-hearing suggests that many different cognitive processes may be involved in the etiology of AVH. These heterogeneous voice-hearing experiences do, however, appear to cluster into a set of subtypes, opening up the possibility of tailoring treatment to the subtype of AVH that a voice-hearer reports. In this paper, we (a) outline our rationale for tailoring CBT to subtypes of voice-hearing, (b) describe CBT for three putative subtypes of AVH (inner speech-based AVH, memory-based AVH, and hypervigilance AVH), and (c) discuss potential limitations and problems with such an approach. We conclude by arguing that tailoring CBT to subtypes of voice-hearing could prove to be a valuable therapeutic development, which may be especially effective when used in early intervention in psychosis services.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Durham UniversityDurham, UK; Department of Psychology, Leeds Trinity UniversityLeeds, UK.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Smailes
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Durham University Durham, UK.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Alderson-Day
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Durham University Durham, UK.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fernyhough
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Durham UniversityDurham, UK; Department of Psychiatry, Trinity College DublinDublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McCarthy-Jones
authors.affiliation: Early Intervention in Psychosis, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust Ashington, UK.
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dodgson
keywords: cognitive behavioral therapy; hallucinations; psychosis; schizophrenia; voice-hearing