Young People's Narratives of Hearing Voices: Systemic Influences and Conceptual Challenges.

Young People's Narratives of Hearing Voices: Systemic Influences and Conceptual Challenges. Clin Psychol Psychother. 2020 Nov 17;: Authors: Parry S, Loren E, Varese F Abstract Despite the prevalence of voice hearing in childhood and adolescence, little qualitative research has been undertaken with young people directly to advance phenomenological and etiological insights into their experiences and interpretations. Consequently, the researchers sought demographic, contextual and qualitative data from 74 young people from eleven countries, aged 13-18 years (28%=M; 61%=F; 21%=TGNB), who self-identified as hearing voices. A Foucauldian-informed Narrative Analysis yielded four analytic chapters, offering novel perspectives into individual, relational, systemic and cultural interpretative narratives surrounding multisensory and multi-self voice hearing. Overall, young people reported heterogenous experiences of voice hearing and associated sensory experiences and most participants reported voice hearing beginning between ages eight and eleven. Further, the emotions felt by the child, as well as reactions displayed by people around the child in relation to the voices, influenced voice-related distress and the nature of the voices in a triadic relationship. A continuum of multisensory features of voice content, nature and relational significance is tentatively proposed to capture the breadth and depth of voice hearing for adolescents to offe...
Source: Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Clin Psychol Psychother Source Type: research