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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 7 of 7. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by ttt on November 14, 2001, at 19:31:23
I'm still confused. If you misterpret external noises and think that it might means something based on your knowledge or memory or experience, would this be a schizophrenia? Would Dr. prescribe medication for this?
I know one time I listen to a CD and picked up some voices that seemed to have sublininal effect. I replayed those seconds many time over and there it was every time. At first, I tend to interpret it as some words but listened so carefully, it was some sound mixed in the music. It could be a glitch in bad recording since it was MP3 from the web. Is my sensitivity a form of schizophrenia?
Would zyprexa or seroquel be a good cure?
Note that this condition has to do with sensitivity, not hallucination, or misinterpretation of existing sounds from many sources not just from the music. If it is not schizophrenia then it would surely be mistakenly diagnosed as schizophrenia.
Posted by Willow on November 15, 2001, at 18:06:09
In reply to Is misinterpreting voices a form of schizophrenia?, posted by ttt on November 14, 2001, at 19:31:23
> I'm still confused. If you misterpret external noises and think that it might means something based on your knowledge or memory or experience, would this be a schizophrenia?
There's a song from my childhood that went like this, "wake up sleepy Jesus," so I thought. This song always gave me a special feeling inside, something like "Amazing Grace."
Well this past winter or so, my loving spouse heard me singing along to the song. He was so kind to point out to me that it was "sleepy Jean!" It sort of felt like a bucket of ice water was thrown into all those sweet memories. Now whenever I hear the song it is Jean, no matter how hard I try to get the old music back.
My point is that everyone misinterprets things. Why are you concerned with schizophrenia, may I ask?
Whispering Willow
Posted by ttt on November 15, 2001, at 20:27:56
In reply to Re: Is misinterpreting voices a form of schizophrenia?, posted by Willow on November 15, 2001, at 18:06:09
> > I'm still confused. If you misterpret external noises and think that it might means something based on your knowledge or memory or experience, would this be a schizophrenia?
>
> There's a song from my childhood that went like this, "wake up sleepy Jesus," so I thought. This song always gave me a special feeling inside, something like "Amazing Grace."
>
> Well this past winter or so, my loving spouse heard me singing along to the song. He was so kind to point out to me that it was "sleepy Jean!" It sort of felt like a bucket of ice water was thrown into all those sweet memories. Now whenever I hear the song it is Jean, no matter how hard I try to get the old music back.
>
> My point is that everyone misinterprets things. Why are you concerned with schizophrenia, may I ask?
>
> Whispering Willow
Thank you, very interesting point. I have the same experiennce not just from the song, but from conversation. What I pick up is very subble, very unclear, almost like subliminal. The problem is that I tend to pick up some noises from other noise sources too, even from the wind, air, from drive by car sometime.
Posted by Mark H. on November 15, 2001, at 22:01:38
In reply to Re: Is misinterpreting voices a form of schizophrenia?, posted by ttt on November 15, 2001, at 20:27:56
Dear Triple T,
I do too, especially when I am very tired. I don't think it is necessarily a matter of "you have it" or "you don't." I suspect that we are all on a continuum between being pretty grounded in concrete reality and being sensitive to stimuli that other people usually ignore.
It sounds like you have a pretty good sense of where the line is between "hearing heater voices" (as my wife and I describe the non-existent, not quite ascertainable "conversations" that both of us hear when the furnace is on!) and "schizophrenia," where meaningless stimuli are interpreted as threatening or heavy with secret, personal meaning.
The first thing to consider is whether your sensitivity to and interpretation of noises as information (or misinterpretation of people speaking) creates a problem in your life. If not, then there is probably no reason to treat it. In fact, it might be appropriate to get your hearing tested. At 52, I frequently misinterpret what people are saying, and it has nothing to do with hearing voices!
If, on the other hand, you hear messages that seem to have profound significance or that threaten you or tell you to do something you don't want to do, then treatment with an anti-psychotic is probably a good idea.
I recommend that you discuss this openly with your doctor. Your doctor can give you a multiple-choice, paper-and-pencil type test called the MMPI, to help both of you better understand what you're experiencing. Then you and your doctor together can decide whether it would be a good idea for you to try medication.
In the past, the anti-psychotics available had too many side effects to warrant using unless a person was decisively schizophrenic or at least in temporary crisis. The newer anti-psychotics are so effective and relatively safe that they are being used to treat many other conditions besides schizophrenia. Doctors and patients can now work together to find effective treatment for conditions that may be problematic yet carry no certain diagnosis. If those medications help you to function more effectively in your life, then treatment is a success.
Especially if you feel you cannot figure out whether your sensitivity is causing you problems or not (or if you already KNOW it's causing problems in your life), then make an appointment with your doctor right away. Your doctor's office staff may be able to help you with your employer by giving you a note saying simply that you need time off for your appointment. Your employer does NOT need to know what for!
I hope some of this helps. I too hear the vague murmuring of voices in the wind. Don't worry. Just talk to your doctor.
With kind regards,
Mark H.
Posted by Mitchell on November 15, 2001, at 22:36:15
In reply to Is misinterpreting voices a form of schizophrenia?, posted by ttt on November 14, 2001, at 19:31:23
I am not an expert in these matters, nor am I trained in the diagnosis of anything; not even the common cold and certainly not schizophrenia. But I do have access to enough information about this to formulate a reasonably informed opinion.
First, and it may be tedious, but whatever you are describing could never *be* schizophrenia, but rather could be recognized as a *symptom* of schizophrenia. And schizophrenia is only a pattern of symptoms that in turn might or might not describe a common underlying cause. Schizophrenia *could* describe symptoms of several unique biological conditions, which in turn could each be a product of genetics, or of any number of biological or social sources of stress.
So that's schizophrenia. What you are describing as the way your mind misinterprets audio stimulus could be symptomatic of a distinct biological condition. My opinion would be that your perceptions can *only* be the product of biological conditions, though the conditions could be a product of social experiences, of some biological stress or of the equipment you were born with.
To put things in context, the way we all process anything is that, when we are exposed to some sensory information and start to process it in our nervous system, we look for learned patterns that match the new experience. The basic guesses - such as shape, color, frequency, volume - tend to be pretty reliable, unless we are really wigged out by some kind of stress like fatigue or disease. As the sensory information becomes more highly processed, the neural networks that get excited tend to be a product of our best guess of what the information might be. The deeper information saturates into the neural pathways, our guesses can be iffy. It is easy to match the frequency of a sound, unless we are tone deaf, but it can be more difficult to find the right match for a more sophisticated experience, something like a word. When it gets to the very advanced level, like guessing social cues, some of us can rely more on confabulation than on reality. Maybe that is where some socio-pathological behavior comes from, but that is a different story.
Now, I said I am not trained to diagnose schizophrenia so this is where my opinion might not be the most reliable. But I suspect that some people who *are* trained to diagnose schizophrenia settle for a few checkmarks on a list of symptoms and don't try to really understand what is happening. So somebody might ask if you hear voices, you might honestly say "yes" and, if you have said yes to a few other poorly defined symptoms, a clinical worker might decide to call you schizophrenic. And once they have diagnosed you, they might conclude that diagnosis implies that certain medications will help you, with no real knowledge of, or interest in, how the medications might effect whatever causes your unique syndrome.
In my opinion, misperceptions tend toward schizophrenia when a person believes and acts on the misperceptions. You can easily have a routine pattern of misperceptions based on an anomaly of a perceptual pathway. To suggest what kind of thing could cause this, if you had a unique hearing weakness, that had never been diagnosed, you might have learned to compensate by recruiting larger interpretive networks to deliver potential matching patterns as you try to recognize a sound. It could be a compensation for tone deafness, for example. Or something else could cause your brain to return more potential matches for an auditory signal, or you for some reason could just not be very accurate in selecting the right match. But trust me, though we might each be more or less aware of it, all of our brains return lots of mismatches. As we go through our day, matching experiences with memory is the essence of perception and there is lots of room for error.
Back to my opinion, schizophrenia has to do with how much we rely upon, act upon and fail to correct misinterpreted experiences. To use a common vernacular (with apologies to those who suffer from schizophrenia) the way you misinterpret sounds doesn't mean you're crazy, but it could drive you crazy. Or it could be a symptom of something really crazy.
Simply put, if you don't consider the misinterpreted audio information to be reliable, and if you don't construct a system of beliefs based on the misinterpretations, it is probably not schizophrenia. If it bothers you, and you really want to understand it, or to treat it, I would suggest that you find an unusually talented and informed neurologist, and that you not settle for the first opinion of a psychiatrist that might say hearing voices means you have schizophrenia.
Posted by ttt on November 16, 2001, at 20:27:40
In reply to Re: Is misinterpreting voices a form of schizophrenia?, posted by Mitchell on November 15, 2001, at 22:36:15
Thank you very very much.
And thank Mitchell, you make a lot of sense.
I tried the ear plug last night and the noises seemed to reduce a great deal but still vaguely sometime since I could still hear thunder/rain and normal noises. The ear plugs were not tight enough.It's too late. I'm already stuck with med that does not seem to help (I though it did because somnolence but it didn't) but in return, it has given me CRHONIC INSOMNIA I didn't have before. I'm now have a very hard time weening it off because I can't sleep w/o it. and insomnia is 10 time worse than hearing voices or noises. I truely sorry I took the med in the first place. I wish time goes back and I didn't have to take it. I was physically healthy and functional. In deed, I had optimal health in the last 10 yrs before the med. I though It could make it even better. Now I have the worst and most terrible time of my entire life. The med make me sick and feel abnormal. I'm trying to stop the med and practice sleep restriction. I'd like to think positive and be hopeful but still hopeless since the med has done something bad in the brain.
Posted by Mark H. on November 21, 2001, at 21:39:22
In reply to Re: Is misinterpreting voices a form of schizophrenia?, posted by ttt on November 16, 2001, at 20:27:40
> Thank you very very much.
I, too, want to express my thanks for your thoughtful reply, Mitchell. I find it very useful.
Mark H.
This is the end of the thread.
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