Auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices,

I understand Auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices, are relatively common.
Has anybody had to deal with or been able to solve this situation please?
I have a person who nobody believes with this problem.
thanks in as=dvance

I quite frequently hear things that don't exist right as I'm drifting off to sleep, but not in general. I'm assuming the problem you're facing is more intrusive on life than that.

I grew up with two family members who experienced schizophrenia, it's hard to tease apart what they were really experiencing and whether we're even able to discuss it meaningfully, but it sometimes seemed like they had auditory (and visual) hallucinations. I think coping with this goes well beyond what's possible on Permies.

Reading about bicameral mentality might be useful or at least interesting.

Hi John,

It is difficult to address the problem at this distance..through a third person…and cross culture. Of course, the person should see a doctor. Sometimes problems can be addressed with something as simple as a hearing aid. For example, if my wife removes her hearing aids, she hears dogs barking in the distance.

 That said,  the first step I suggest, after the doctor, would be thought checking. It is not intrusive and pretty common sense.It is exactly what it sounds like:  The voices, sounds, etc are real for the individual  if the person is hearing them.  Nevertheless they need to ask themselves grounding questions such as,  “If there is no one else in the room with me, how much should I pay attention to the voices, sounds, etc?”  Or, if there are others in the room, “ can I assign this voice to anyone else in the room?”  Or, the might simply ask themselves , “Does this make sense?” People can sometimes learn to filter out voices and sounds that “don’t belong.”  

In terms of the filtering,  we do it all the time.  Maybe there is a refrigerator with a loud compressor.  We don’t notice it until we buy a new refrigerator. Then we comment how quiet the new refrigerator  is …and not how loud the old one was.

I had auditory hallucinations when I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation nursing my uncle around the clock. Unfortunately I would 'hear' him calling me, and after several sessions of getting up in the middle of the night only to find him fast asleep (bear in mind most nights I would be up tending to him three times a night, so it was quite normal to hear him) I learned to wait and listen carefully for a second call before moving.

I also had both visual and auditory hallucinations when I suffered from migraines. One time I remember a big bird flying up to the window and beating his wings against the glass trying to get in, but my other half assured me there was nothing there.

More recently I've been having olfactory hallucinations, I think related to the very high CO2 levels I was experiencing as a side-effect of the H pylori infection. Sometimes I could smell smoke, or something cooking, or the most annoying one is the smell of gas because there is no way I'm going to ignore a gas leak! They seem to have gone away since taking the antibiotics.

Not sure I should mention the two cheeky goblins who emerged out of a hay-bale and poked fun at me at the end of an exceptionally hard day haymaking once, daring me to attempt to pick up just one more bale. Or the psychedelic Pied Piper of Hamlyn who kept sneering at me when the doctor gave me a medication that didn't agree with me. He took me off it straight away!

There have been a couple of others too, so I guess I'm a little prone to such things. Maybe linked to an over-active imagination. And one of the reasons I never touch drugs and only take alcohol once or twice a year.

Unfortunate, this is a sign of Schizophrenia.  Or this could mean the person has a tumor or a drug problem.

This person would be advised to seek medical attention.

Years ago, my neighbor was trying to help her brother.

We had to call the sheriff when he was out of control in front of our house and having conversations with unknown parties.

I helped a friend of mine through a severe psychotic episode a few years ago. No drugs helped her and I persuaded her to continue her studies and find drug free ways to control it, then share them.

She is now a researcher and author.

Here is a book she co-authored about drug-free treatments for psychosis.



amazon.com link

i've also experienced it when exhausted or when taking certain medications. and like Christopher I've got a sibling who hears them as part of a larger psychological backdrop and... it's complicated (what an understatement).
I think it's important that any medical problem that could be contributing gets ruled out- it could be an easy solution (I'm thinking of when my mother was dehydrated and hallucinating people in the corners) or also trigger treatment for serious problems.

My take, in no particular order, on what has been said:
Yes,  I have had them BAD, sinus infections started it, but then an antibiotic made them MUCH worse. Rule out sinus/inner ear problems, and they are harder to rule out than you think.

Something I have noticed lately that is triggering audio effects is using headphones, it seems to do something weird to my inner ear issues, leaves them ringing (?) for hours.

Chiropractic treatment on the neck sometimes helps, impinged nerves send random signals to the brain. Human brains have  a strong tendency to hear the patterns of language in chaotic sounds or random nerve noise.

Fish oil has helped a lot of people, even schizophrenics, it contains nutrients your body needs to fix problems in the brain.

Reality checking helps you cope, I had a cat that I'd ask "did you hear that?" she was the kind of cat who always reacted to sounds, so if she didn't hear it, I could safely ignore it.

Olfactory hallucinations are horrible, I had them bad as a side effect of a med, and lesser ones all the time due to structural damage to my sinuses leaving weird nerve issues. I keep excess smoke alarms, so I don't ignore smoke smell that's real, and get other people to tell me if they smell something, if so where is it? It's horrifying when they say "no, I don't smell anything" and I'm trying not to throw up from the stench.

Not being believed about any kind of hallucination, or being told you are just crazy when it turns out to be a medical issue doesn't help anyone. I had a very hard time telling a doctor yes when he asked me about it, as I feared being labeled crazy (and I was, but not by him. Took me years to get out of that mess. Turns out I wasn't crazy, just eccentric and having medical issues.)

And oh my... my empathy for all the people who have responded yes to this question, it's sad to see so many of us have problems. And good wishes to the person whose problems started this...

Personally, I like the least invasive investigations first.  We had a family member in our care with this issue and this is the path I wish we took.

A good auditory test can show up physical problems like tinnitus which can manifest as voices.  ENT would be another good starting place.  Both combined are even better.

Some old dental work, implants, and hearing aids can pick up signals.  It's not common these days, but doctors we talked to when my family member was hearing voices and music, said there is a case every other year.  (It turned out his hearing aids were picking up am radio as the manufacturer didn't do a thing.)

If it's only active at a certain time of day, a sleep lab is another path to try.

Having a family doctor to coordinate these tests can help show other issues (migraine, etc) that might be causing it.

From here, the next question is how responsive are the voices.  

If they ignore direct conversation or environment, neurologist.

If they appear to respond to the environment or engage in dialogue, psychiatrist. (This may not result in a psych diagnosis as with my family member above, it was this dr who suggested testing the hearing aids)

Both are pretty invasive in my expierence, so ruling out the physical causes first migt be best.

And of course, if they are urging one to do bad things, a trip to the emergency room is a really good idea.

To add to r’s comment, in the USA a full auditory exam is normally done by an audiologist. Sometimes it might be done by an Ear Nose and Throat specialist.  It is not done by hearing aid salesperson.  My experience is that most hearing aid sales people will try to sell the customer a hearing aid … I have encountered a few impressive exceptions.  I had a very bad experience with an employee who I gave the above advice to.  He went with the hearing aid salesperson anyway and got two very expensive hearing aids.  He ended up dead from a tumor.

Along those same lines, in my experience, a Psychiatrist is likely to want to fix problems with a pill. A Psychologist is more likely to look at a broader scope of options.  I don’t see pills as necessarily bad, but they would not be my first choice.

Keep in mind that hearing non-consensus reality things when one is almost asleep or just waking up is part of the spectrum of common human experiences and is not indicative of a problem, same with hearing things when one is sleep deprived, its your brain's way of saying go the fuck to sleep.  But yes, if someone is hearing sounds and/or voices when one is fully awake that others aren't hearing then something is going on which may need to be addressed..