Auditory verbal hallucinations in bipolar disorder
Event details
1. Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are most commonly associated with schizophrenia, but also occur in other psychiatric conditions, including bipolar disorder during manic or depressive episodes. Despite this, the phenomenology of AVH in bipolar disorder has received little attention. We conducted a scoping review to identify and synthesise existing empirical studies describing the phenomenological characteristics of AVH in bipolar disorder. A systematic search was performed in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and PsycINFO. Ten studies met inclusion criteria and were included in the review.
In this seminar, I will present the main phenomenological dimensions of AVH identified in bipolar disorder and discuss similarities and differences compared to the phenomenology of voices in schizophrenia. 2. An important issue concerns the time lag between the onset of voices and their disclosure to others. It seems that the auditive verbal hallucinations do not arise from nothing but are preceded and accompanied by the anomalies of subjective experiences. The disclosure of AVH typically happened when patients reach a point of profound subjective suffering or dysfunction in life, often several years after their beginning. The purpose of this presentation is to examine this topic from empirical and clinical perspectives and to explore why it is so difficult for the clinicians to ask the patients about these experiences.