By Helen O’Callaghan
FOR some, it happens once in a lifetime; for others it’s five times a day.
For some, it’s a whisper; for others, it’s a shout or the excited babble of a crowd of football fans. The number of children and young people who hear voices is higher than we might imagine.
Dr Ian Kelleher of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), who also works at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, led research on a 2012-published study, which found that more than one-fifth of 11- to 13-year-olds in Ireland had auditory hallucinations.
Dr Kelleher refers to other studies that found 17% of children aged nine to 13 heard voices, whereas by age 13 to 18 only 7.5% did. “It’s much more common than we thought, especially in young children and pre-teens but it decreases in the course of development.”
Auditory hallucinations can range from isolated sentences heard occasionally to minutes-long conversations between two and more people. People can hear screaming and shouting or whispers and murmurs.
“It can be a blip, especially with a young child. Why it happens isn’t entirely clear,” says Dr Kelleher, who believes it may be related to brain maturation.
“As the brain’s developing, you can get crossed wires. Coming up to the teens, brain connections are being fine-tuned. We call it synaptic pruning. This fine tuning can lead to miscommunication. In stressful periods, it may come to the fore in people with an underlying vulnerability.”
Pre-teen voice-hearing is likely to be “benign, transient and to resolve itself”, says Dr Kelleher. But a North Dublin-based study of 13 to 16-year-olds found 80% presenting with auditory hallucination had at least one psychiatric disorder – not necessarily psychosis.
“In the study, psychosis was very uncommon. Hearing voices was much more commonly associated with depression, behaviour or anxiety disorders. When the underlying cause was treated, the voices resolved,”
Rachel Waddingham is project manager with Voice Collective at Mind in Camden, a London-wide initiative supporting young people who hear voices or have visions. She was in Ireland recently training youth mental health workers to set up peer support groups for voice-hearing teens. Waddingham began seeing visions at age seven — monsters in the mirror. By age 14, she was seeing aliens and at university realised she was hearing voices other people couldn’t.
“I spent a few years in hospital and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I’m a cautionary tale for what can happen if young people can’t open up.”
She turned a major corner in her early 20s when she was introduced to voice-hearing support groups, where she saw others “finding ways to deal with their voices” and realised she was “a human being worthy of being heard”.
Through her work, Waddingham has met children as young as six — one six-year-old began hearing voices when her brother left for university and her parents split up.
She has met teenagers who heard positive voices when they were younger but whose voices became distressing upon entering their teens.
“The voices can be useful. A friendly voice can have a real purpose in making an isolated child feel less so. And if a child gets the right support to stand up to a critical voice, this can be helpful in enabling them stand up to real bullies,” comments Waddingham, who says voice-hearing is often a signpost — “a big flashing light” — to an emotional trauma in the child’s life.
Dr Harry Gijbels, senior lecturer in UCC’s School of Nursing and Midwifery and member of the Irish Institute of Mental Health Nursing, says voice-hearing can be sparked by “usual stresses of life”. But he cites research showing 75% of voice-hearing links back to trauma such as abuse or growing up in a dysfunctional household – “very distressing situations from which the child can’t escape”.
What’s important, says Gijbels, is finding what the voices represent in a person’s life. “The whole trick is ‘what do the voices mean in my life?’ People don’t necessarily want to get rid of their voices. They don’t want the silence. They need to understand the voice and be in control of it.” He says it’s important nobody from the outside imposes a particular explanation. “Psychiatry tends to diagnose something faulty in the brain, but many famous people heard voices – Gandhi did. So did Joan of Arc.”
Today, Waddingham, 36, continues to hear 13 different voices. “I’m no longer diagnosed with schizophrenia. I don’t take medication. I work full-time. I’m married. I have three cats. I travel the world and love my work. I think I’m pretty successful!”
* Plans are underway to set up a Hearing Voices Ireland Network. www.voicecollective.co.uk.
CORK-BASED artist Michelle Dalton, 25, started hearing voices at age three.
“The first was a female voice whom I now call Sarah Feeney, a very artistic positive voice. The voice reassured me that whenever I felt abandoned or not good enough that I could do great things.
“The voices became incredibly distressing when I was 11. They were destructive, violent, aggressive and instructed me to harm myself, which I did. I didn’t tell anybody about them.
“These voices were voicing the trauma. When you’re repressing something, the voices can express the memories you have buried.
“At 15, I had a huge public breakdown. I still didn’t tell anyone in case I’d be branded crazy. I made up that I’d taken ecstasy. At 17, I went to a psychotherapist who, after five minutes, branded me bipolar and suicidal. A GP said I was making up the voices for attention. At 19 or 20, I started doing my own research, asking: how did I end up here? I channelled my trauma through art and music.
“Today, I am the expert of my experience. I’m someone who has gone through traumatic events. I have voices to help me with those traumatic experiences. I hear up 200 different types of voices that come in all forms, including sounds, music and human voices. We get along. Sometimes we don’t. Most of the time, I’m able to focus in on the most important voices.
“I still hear Sarah Feeney, who’s grandiose and has big ideas. I have a really good comforting mother voice. I love my musical voices the most. I have my own inner MP3 player.”
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I’ve been hearing voices and seeing things since I was about 6 or 7 years of age. Back then I never told anyone about it in case they wouldn’t believe me or they’d think I was looking for attention. I did have behaviour problems back then which I had no control over, I couldn’t get on with people my own age so I’d get very angry and bullyish towards them, as a result of that you could say bad karma came my way and the voices were very unhappy with me. For a very long time I thought I was the only person in the world this experience was happening to. I heard name calling like psycho and schizo in my head which was quite distressing, but I just put it down to karma again for the ways I was acting out. I found out about a group in my area for people who hear voices around 2 years ago and I suddenly realized I wasn’t alone. Sometimes I feel that it’s my fault that others hear voices, like somehow I’m affecting others with my experiences, then again I do get paranoid from time to time, maybe that’s all that is. I’m now 42 years old and I’m beginning to accept more each day that they are there and may always be in my life but I do find mindfulness meditation helps me to prevent them from taking over my whole day. It’s like the magic pill I never knew about and it also helps with the side effects of the medication. I’m hoping to find the Confidence to partake in facilitator training later in the year as I feel I have some hands on experience I could share and maybe help someone else with this experience in their lives.
Hi Ruth, thanks so much for sharing your experiences. I’m really glad that you have found out – through attending the group – that’s you’re not alone. I hope you do decide to give group facilitation a try, but whether you become a facilitator or simply help out at a group … it’s great that you can use the experiences you’ve had to reach out to others. Best wishes, Rai