Musical hallucinations: prevalence in psychotic and nonpsychotic outpatients.

BACKGROUND

Musical hallucinations have been considered a rare manifestation of psychotic states or brain and hearing abnormalities. However, an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) assessment tool refers to musical hallucinations and our preliminary study showed that about one third of OCD patients experienced musical hallucinations.

AIMS: To elucidate the lifetime prevalence of musical hallucinations among psychotic and nonpsychotic psychiatric outpatients.

METHODS

Lifetime experience of musical hallucinations was examined with a specially designed structured interview in 190 consecutive outpatients with diagnoses of anxiety, affective, and schizophrenia disorders.

RESULTS

Musical hallucinations occurred in more than one fifth of all diagnoses. The prevalence of musical hallucinations was highest in OCD patients (41%). Musical hallucinations were significantly more frequent with more comorbid disorders, and logistic regression revealed that this finding was mainly due to OCD combined with either social phobia or schizophrenia.

CONCLUSION

Musical hallucinations are more common among psychiatric patients than previously reported and are more suggestive of OCD than of other mental disorders.