Many children 'hear voices'; most aren't bothered

[Kadie]

Many children 'hear voices'; most aren't bothered
Mon Jan 25, 9:51 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Nearly 1 in 10 seven- to eight-year-olds hears voices that aren't really there, according to a new study.

But most children who hear voices don't find them troubling or disruptive to their thinking, the study team found. "These voices in general have a limited impact in daily life," Agna A. Bartels-Velthuis of University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

And parents whose children hear voices should not be overly concerned, she added. "In most cases the voices will just disappear. I would advise them to reassure their child and to watch him or her closely."

Up to 16 percent of mentally healthy children and teens may hear voices, the researchers note in the British Journal of Psychiatry. While hearing voices can signal a heightened risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in later life, they add, the "great majority" of young people who have these experiences never become mentally ill.

To further investigate how common these "auditory vocal hallucinations" are and whether they are associated with developmental and behavioral factors, the researchers looked at 3,870 Groningen primary schoolers. All were asked whether they had heard "one or more voices that only you and no one else could hear" in the past year.

more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100125/hl_nm/us_children_voices

[Lance_Boyle]

1. Alternate headline: 'many children have vivid imaginations'

Seriously? They're asking children to self-report "hearing voices that aren't really there?" Did they also bother to ask "how many of you have imaginary friends?"

This one should win the "stupid fucking assmonkey pretend research of the year" award.

[fasttense]

6. Just what I was thinking.

I remember a study that asked children if they ever lied, 98% of them said NO. Then they gave them candy and said if they told their parents they would have to give up the candy. When their parents asked if they had candy (the parents were in on the experiment) 99% of the children said NO. No candy was taken from the young children.

I wish I could find the link.

[gkhouston]

7. my kid used to have imaginary friends who were identical twins.

She told me they weren't the same age, however. That must have been kinda rough on the imaginary mom.

[jbnow]

8. No, they asked them if they heard voices that other people couldn't hear

Not "hearing voices that aren't really there"
That would be stupid phrasing because if they hear the voices, the voices are "there"

And it is not the same as imaginary friends or pretend conversations. They are not always friendly or conversations.
If there is long term follow up this could be very valuable. Will it turn out that hearing angry or multiple voices or ones that interfere be a precursor to later schizophrenia? Are other problems associated with it like learning difficulties? Those are just a couple of good issues that came to mind

Not assmonkey at all.

[Orangeone]

9. Hearing voices

I think most people think that hearing voices means hearing it inside your head, but auditory hallucinations appear to be coming from outside like any other noise.

[Lance_Boyle]

14. Exactly.

I stand by my earlier assertion of stupid assmonkey nonresearch. Some children have vivid imaginations, and some granting agency got ripped off big time by "researchers" who couldn't tell science from the holes in their asses.

All these results tell anyone is that some kids have imaginary friends and/or vivid imaginations. It's beyond asinine.

[tanyev]

2. Apparently I had a whole flock of imaginary children when I was little.

By the time I was old enough to really have children, I didn't want any. :crazy:

[aquart]

3. Voices saying what?

Sounds like a really dumb question to me. How did the kids know no one else could hear these voices?

[asdjrocky]

4. Sometimes the voice sounds like a little green cricket, who wears a top hat and uses a cane.

[JuniperLea]

5. Then there are the kids who will tell you they do...

Because it's fun to have an imaginary friend that no one else can see. I had several... held long, detailed conversations with them. Swore up and down to parents and grand parents, aunts, uncles, friends, that I heard them. Combine the imagination with a penchant for eavesdropping, a flair for the dramatic, and a sincere desire to be psychic, and you have an eight-year-old at the center of attention for months! Yay! What fun!

I never heard squat. But boy, did I have them going!

:rofl:

[pipi_k]

10. I never heard voices, but I did see little movies in my head.

One time when I about 7, I was very sick, and I was lying in bed having a mental re-run of a cartoon that I had watched on TV a few days before.

It just cracked me up, and I was laughing and laughing so hard

My poor parents were terrified. I think they thought my fever was getting out of control and I was maybe having hallucinations or something. Because I was, like, basically laughing like hell for no reason at all...


I still get mental movies and cartoons. Sometimes they make me laugh when I shouldn't, and I get into big trouble.

[freeplessinseattle]

11. ok, some might think I'm nuts, but I did hear voices at that age

and they did bother me to the point of tears. It wasn't anything to do with my imagination, I dearly did not want these sounds in my head but they haunted me. It's hard to describe, and the actual words weren't even that audible often, more kind of muffled, or many people talking at once.

My dad said he had the same problem when he was that age, and my grandfather speculated that maybe as children we are more attuned to psychic abilities, even if we don't want to be. So maybe the kids that tend to be more intuitive (like I've grown up to be) are the ones hearing voices. I don't know, maybe far-fetched, but sounded better to me than just thinking I was losing my mind!

[Fire1]

12. Yep. I heard them, too. That's when they found out I was

allergic to 'codeine.':rofl:

[chowder66]

13. Hypoglycemia

I heard voices in my mid to late teens. They were not constant and I was embarrassed to discuss it... but I finally told my doctor who suggested that I might have hypoglycemia. He gave me a glucose-tolerance test which turnded out positive. He sent me to a nutritionist and once I got everything under control the voices went away. I knew that they were odd, I knew others could not hear them because they were so odd. I was fearful that something was mentally wrong but I functioned in everyway. I found them mostly annoying...glad that is an old story now.