Can hallucinations lead to post-traumatic growth?

By Alex Fradera If you contemplate how a person’s life would be changed by starting to hear or see things others can’t, can you imagine it could offer anything good? A research team from Hull university and the surrounding NHS trusts suggest that among the tumult, hallucinations can also offer opportunities for growth. Writing in the Journal of Psychology and Psychotherapy, lead author Lily Dixon and her team detail the experiences of seven people who have lived with verbal or auditory hallucinations and how, amid the struggles, their journeys have taken them to some positive places. The five men and two women, aged 28 to 53, were recruited from mental health services. Some had begun experiencing hallucinations in childhood, others later in life. The researchers interviewed them about how the experience had affected them and their relationships, the challenges they had faced, and what they expected from the future. The interviewees were united in seeing the arrival of their hallucinations as an unwelcome shock. They were something to be hidden so as to avoid stigma. “I don’t want to accept it’s schizophrenia because it will always be branded, I’ll always be branded with that name, and if you tell anyone you’ve got schizophrenia they automatically think that you’re a mental case and that you’re going to kill them,” said one interviewee. Some felt that to remain themselves, the experience needed rejecting – “I’m trying to separate the person, I like ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Mental health Qualitative Source Type: blogs