A comparative study of nature and types of hallucination across different kinds of psychosis

Hallucination is a fundamental psychiatric symptom often regarded as a hallmark of psychosis. It can be found in schizophrenia, other psychoses (including delusional disorder, acute and transient psychosis, post-partum psychosis), affective disorders, dementia, substance induced psychotic disorders, and delirium.

This study is a systematic attempt to study and compare the nature and types of hallucination across three different study groups, namely schizophrenia, mania, and other psychosis.

The study was conducted in a total of 90 randomly selected patients of schizophrenia, mania, and other psychotic disorders, i.e. 30 in each study group. The nature and types of hallucination were assessed by using the Schedule for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN).

Hallucination was found in 66.67% cases of schizophrenia and 53.33% cases of other psychosis while in case of mania only 13.33% had hallucination. Hallucinations of schizophrenia were more prominent with frequency of hallucination being present every weeks. In majority of cases of schizophrenia (53.33%) and other psychosis (33.33%), sound was more or less like real voices whereas special quality of sound (not much like real voices) was found in majority of mania (ten per cent) patients.

In mania, auditory hallucination is comparatively rare as compared to schizophrenia or other psychosis. Hallucinations in schizophrenia were found to be more mood incongruent as compared to mania and other psychosis.