Intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations: a comparative study of intrusions in psychosis

Several theories of auditory hallucinations implicate the involvement of in trusive thoughts and other theories suggest that the interpretation of voic es deter-mines the distress associated with them. This study tested the hyp otheses that patients who experience auditory hallucinations will experienc e more intrusive thoughts and be more distressed by them and interpret them as more uncontrollable and unacceptable than the control groups. It also e xamines whether the interpretation of hallucinations is associated with the distress caused by them and whether there are differences in the way that patients respond to and interpret their thoughts and voices, A questionnaire examining the frequency of intrusive thoughts and the react ions to them was administered to a group of patients with a diagnosis of sc hizophrenia who experienced auditory hallucinations, a psychiatric control group and a non-patient control group. In addition, the patients in the fir st group completed a similar questionnaire in relation to their voices. Ana lyses of covariance showed that patients who experienced auditory hallucina tions had more intrusive thoughts than the control groups and that they fou nd their intrusive thoughts more distressing, uncontrollable and unacceptab le than the control groups. Correlational analyses revealed that patients' interpretations of their voices were associated with the measures of distre ss in relation to them. Repeated measures analyses of covariance found no d ifferences between thoughts and voices on the dimensions assessed. The theo retical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.