Understanding Schizophrenia And Hallucinations

One of the most common misconceptions that people have about schizophrenia is that it is synonymous to hallucinations. Truth is, hallucinations are just one of many symptoms to schizophrenia. However, this is one of the most telling symptoms for this condition because it could reveal a whole range of information that would help provide solution to the quest in finding the real cause on what makes a person suffer from schizophrenia. 

Fictive Perceptions on the Five Senses

Hallucinations are considered to be the most dramatic manifestation of schizophrenia. How does it affect one's senses? There are several different approaches to that, depending on which particular sense is affected:

• Sense of hearing – This fictive perception is better known as auditory delusions and is one of the most common symptoms to schizophrenia. It is characterized by the hearing of “voices” that was not there before. 

• Sense of sight – Visible hallucinations happen whenever a person sees objects that does not actually exist in reality. However, these visions or sights cannot be dismissed easily as it can have deeper significance in an individual's schizophrenic disorder.

• Sense of touch – Tangible hallucinations is when a person feels somebody or something although there is none in reality. Those who've suffered schizophrenia as a result of complications from substance abuse or other mental diseases usually feel unusual bugs or objects crawling on their bodies. 

• Sense of smell – This is also known as olfactive hallucinations, wherein a person smells an unusual odor that the source cannot be determined and only the patient can smell. 

What are Hallucinations?

After going through the common forms of hallucinations that affect each of the basic senses, it is important to define hallucination to have a clear understanding of what it is and how it happens. Hallucinations are basically defined as perceptions that only a patient with schizophrenia undergoes or experiences. These hallucinations greatly vary in nature – some are frightening, others are incomprehensible, while a few others still have some form of attachment to the patient's reality. 

Auditory delusion is considered to be the most common form of hallucination that schizophrenics experiences. To learn more about it in detail, you can read further below. 

Auditory Delusions 

As mentioned above, auditory delusions or hallucinations that affect the sense of hearing is the most common type of symptom for schizophrenia. The patients hear voices, sounds, or mumblings that are not actually there and cannot be heard by anyone else. These sounds typically begin on a whisper until it becomes clear and audible. 

The individual who suffers from auditory delusions is not aware that these voices or sounds are actually coming from inside their head instead of from an external source. As for the explanation on where these voices are coming from and how they develop in the patient's brain, more research study has yet to be conducted to explain that. 

What Are These “Voices”?

The need to explain the “voices” that schizophrenics hear resulting to auditory delusions is important given that these “voices” could take on many forms. Some are threatening or accusatory in nature. These voices command the individual to do something that they would not normally do. This is how patients with schizophrenia are believed to turn violent or out of control, even when it is not typical of their nature or demeanor.

To further add up to the danger of auditory delusions, the patient often considers that as their reality and refuse opinion or help from others. There are currently various treatment methods being experimented to cure auditory hallucinations with antipsychotic medications being one of the leading options around. It is aimed to reduce or completely eliminate these “voices”  to control the patient's behavior.
