Hallucinations linked to abuse in childhood

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Psychiatric patients who were abused as children are more likely to suffer hallucinations than those who were not abused, research has found.

They are also far more susceptible to suffering "command hallucinations" - 17 per cent compared with 2 per cent of the non-abused.

In these hallucinations, the person hears a voice ordering him or her to commit self-harm or hurt someone else.

"These are the most debilitating hallucinations," one of the researchers, Dr John Read, said yesterday.

Dr Read is a senior psychology lecturer at Auckland University.

The study was published yesterday in a journal published by the British Psychological Society.

It follows groundbreaking study led by Dr Read and published last year which linked sexual abuse in childhood to schizophrenia.

The latest study is the first in Australasia to compare abused and non-abused psychiatric patients.

Nearly half of the 200 community mental health clients studied had been abused sexually or physically, and almost a third had been abused as children.

Dr Read said that for those abused as children, hallucinations of vision and all the other senses were much more common than for the non-abused.

A reason for the difference would be that trauma early in life sensitised people to stressful situations, especially if they were similar to the childhood trauma, he said.

"If you have been, say, raped by your step-dad as a child, you are quite likely to be fearful of sexual situations, or of men in general.

"It may be an overreaction because not all men are a threat but it's not an illness. It's an understandable reaction based on past life experience."

Also, brain scans had shown that the brains of traumatised children had similarities to those of many adult schizophrenics.

The brain damage was not permanent and could be resolved with appropriate counselling in addition to or instead of medicines.

"The key is learning how to regulate the emotions caused by stressful situations."

Another study, from Dr Read and Jan Lothian, published this week in the New Zealand Journal of Psychology, found that 69 per cent of a group of New Zealand psychiatric patients who had been abused believed there was a connection between the abuse and their present mental illness.

But only 17 per cent of the patients thought their psychiatrist or other mental health worker saw any connection.



Research findings



* Some of the worst symptoms of schizophrenia are more common in psychiatric patients abused as children than in those who were not abused.

*Records for 200 community mental health clients showed 92 had been sexually or physically abused. Of the 60 abused as children, many went on to be abused in adulthood.

* Fifty-three per cent abused as children suffered auditory hallucinations, compared with 18 per cent of those not abused. The figure rose to 71 per cent for those sexually abused both in childhood and as adults.

* Thirteen per cent of those sexually abused as children had hallucinations of touch, such as insects crawling on them or objects entering them, compared with none of the non-abused.