We hallucinate more than we think

Have you ever heard voices in your head, but no one actually spoke to you? Or have you ever seen things that weren’t really there? Well, you’re not alone.

Such an experience, which occurs without an external stimulus, is what psychologists call a hallucination. The term inspires fear because it is most often associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. In fact, hallucinations are common in several subtypes of schizophrenia, so it’s understandable for someone experiencing a hallucination to worry about their mental health and ask, “Am I going crazy?”

But hallucinations are more common than you might think – and they’re not always serious. At least that’s what a new study published in the journal “Psychology and Psychotherapy” shows: In the nonclinical group of subjects — ie, people without mental illness — one in six had experienced a true hallucination at some point in their lives.

The research team, led by psychologist Charlotte Aynsworth of the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, collected data from 466 people with an average age of 21. The test takers all completed the Multimodal Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire (abbreviated MUSEQ), in which they asked statements such as “I saw lights, flashes, or other shapes that other people did not see” with information from a frequency scale of “never” and “almost never” through “rarely” and “occasionally” to “regularly”.

The results are astonishing: about 85 percent of the participants said they had already had an abnormal visual experience. Nearly 38 percent said they experienced a real hallucination – similar to that experienced by patients with psychosis. The psychologists checked with additional questions whether the experiences actually matched the clinical definition of a visual hallucination, ie whether the subjects were fully conscious during the hallucinations or not. 17.4 percent of those surveyed, more than one in six, met this criterion.

Further interviews by the research team revealed that most subjects experienced hallucinations alone and in the evening. When asked about the possible cause of the hallucinations, most of the study participants either said they were tired or their minds were “playing tricks” on them. However, some test subjects also indicated that they considered the hallucinations a threat to their mental health and were very concerned about this.

The research shows that there is little reason to do so. Since visual hallucinations are very common, such an experience does not mean that someone is in a psychotic phase or has a mental illness. The research team therefore thinks it appropriate to look at hallucinations differently: because they are common and almost normal, people do not have to react so negatively to them and not immediately worry about their mental health. Today, people often shy away from talking about such experiences, although it would be interesting and comforting to discuss them. (i.e)