A clear association between hearing voices and mental illness
By Liz Lockhart
New research findings, released this week, suggest that hearing voices could be a marker for serious 
mental illness in adolescents. The research further suggests that auditory hallucinations (hearing voices) can effect up to a fifth of children aged between 11 and 13.
For the majority of children who hear voices, the hallucination stops as they get older, however, those who continue to hear voices may be at risk of more complex mental illnesses.
The study findings are published online by the British Journal of Psychiatry. Led by Dr Ian Kelleher of the Department of Psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RSCI), a team of researchers assessed nearly 2,500 children aged between 11 and 16 years in four separate studies.
It was found that:
- between 21-23% of young adolescents aged between 11-13, have experienced auditory hallucinations
- just over half (57%) of the younger adolescents who heard voices were found to have a psychiatric disorder following clinical assessment
- In older adolescents aged between 13-16, just 7% reported hearing voices
- Nearly 80% of the older adolescents who heard voices were found to have a psychiatric disorder
These finding demonstrate a clear association between auditory hallucinations and serious mental illness.
Dr Kelleher said ‘We found that auditory hallucinations were common even in children as young as 11 years old. Auditory hallucinations can vary from hearing an isolated sentence now and then, to hearing ‘conversations’ between two or more people lasting for several minutes. It may present like screaming or shouting, or other times it could sound like whispers or murmurs. It varies greatly from child to child, and frequency can be once a month to once every day.’
He adds ‘For many children, these experiences appear to represent a ‘blip’ on the radar that does not turn out to signify any underlying or undiagnosed problems. However, for the other children these symptoms turned out to be a warning sign of serious underlying psychiatric illness, including clinical depression and behavioural disorders, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Some older children with auditory hallucinations had two or more disorders. This finding is important because if a child reports auditory hallucinations it should prompt their treating doctor to consider that the child may have more than one diagnosis.’
Professor Mary Cannon of the RSCI’s Department of Psychiatry said ‘Our study suggests that hearing voices seems to be more common in children than was previously thought. In most cases these experiences resolve with time. However, in some children these experiences persist into older adolescence and this seems to be an indicator that they may have a complex mental health issue and require more in-depth assessment.’
