Living with voices and sounds other cannot hear

Abstract

Hearing voices and sounds unshared by others, often termed auditory (verbal) hallucinations, is commonly known as a symptom of serious mental illness. The fact that it is not uncommon in the general population has led to research focused on hearing voices and sounds as experiences in themselves. The aim of this research project was to understand how people experience hearing and dealing with voices and sounds in everyday life and over time. One person without a psychiatric diagnosis and fourteen people with a psychotic illness participated in two to three in-depth interviews. These were mainly analyzed and interpreted with a hermeneutic phenomenological approach.

The results revealed that the woman without a psychiatric diagnosis had much in common with the participants who had a psychotic disorder; they all found living with hearing voices and sounds to be recurrently upsetting. Her daily life was, however, less frequently disrupted and she did not have to deal with other mental complaints or mental health services. The participants were recurrently struck by the experiences of hearing someone; this echoed and amplified past and present experiences with others and existential magnitudes. The participants developed ways of dealing with the opposing presences and the adversity they reflected through personal trajectories: some were linear, most were circular or spiraling. Central themes encompassed: retrieving or developing their sense of having a voice and navigating health care. Being believed by someone whom the participants trusted and could talk to about their experiences was essential to becoming more confident and developing new ways of understanding and dealing with the troublesome presences.

The results challenge nurses and other health care providers to engage in participatory dialogues and thus acknowledge voice hearer’s experiences and attune their interventions and aims to the voice hearer’s perspectives. Furthermore they are challenged to address past, present and future concerns or existential matters echoed by the voices (e.g. trauma, employment or meaningful activities, spiritual and religious matters).