ArticleSchizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany)2022
Occurrence and phenomenology of hallucinations in the general population: A large online survey.
Article in Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hallucinations and auditory-verbal signal detection studies: A meta-analytic review.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Social disconnection and psychotic-like experiences in the Slovak DISCONNECT epidemiological study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A Latent Class Analysis of Hallucination-like Experiences in Nonclinical Adults from Jammu and Kashmir.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2026Article
- Multidimensionality of hallucination-like experiences: A factor structure refinement of the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale.Schizophrenia research. Cognition · 2025Article
- Visual hallucinations in psychosis: What do people actually see?Psychology and psychotherapy · 2025Article
- Hallucinations at the interface of philosophy and the empirical sciences.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Content-based clustering of hallucinations across sensory modalities in a large online survey.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- EEG resting state alpha dynamics predict an individual's vulnerability to auditory hallucinations.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2024Article
- Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) combined with unsupervised machine learning shows sensitivity to identify individuals in potential need for psychiatric assessment.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Article
- The experience of felt presence in a general population sample.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2024Article
- Carl Jung: a life on the edge of reality with hypnagogia, hyperphantasia, and hallucinations.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Perceptual distortions characteristic of Alice in Wonderland syndrome in contemporary figurative painting.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Felt presence and its determinants in young adults: results from three independent samples.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Psychometric properties of the mini international neuropsychiatric interview (MINI) psychosis module: a Sub-Saharan Africa cross country comparison.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Cross-cultural Differences in Hallucinations: A Comparison Between Middle Eastern and European Community-Based Samples.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- Recreational Drug Use and Distress From Hallucinations in the General Dutch Population.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- Social Deafferentation and the Relation Between Loneliness and Hallucinations.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- When Spirit Calls: A Phenomenological Approach to Healthy Voice-Hearers.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2023Article
- Auditory hallucinations, top-down processing and language perception: a general population study.Psychological medicine · 2019Article
- Atopy Increases Risk of Psychotic Experiences: A Large Population-Based Study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Although epidemiological studies report that hallucinations occur in 6-15% of the general population, little is known about their phenomenology. To overcome this paucity, this study investigates the phenomenological characteristics of hallucinations in the general population, by using a nationally promoted online survey to assess hallucination phenomenology in four sensory modalities, through a self-report version of the Questionnaire for Psychotic Experiences (QPE), in 10,448 participants (aged 14-88 years). The phenomenology of hallucinations was assessed if hallucinations reportedly occurred in the past month. In the past month, auditory hallucinations were reported most frequently (29.5%), followed by visual (21.5%), tactile (19.9%), and olfactory hallucinations (17.3%); hallucinations in two or more modalities were reported by 47.6%. Substantial numbers of participants rated their hallucinations as severe, due to negative content (16.0-31.6%), previous bothersome experiences (14.8-20.2%), ensuing distress (10.5-16.8%), and/or ensuing disfunctioning (12.7-17.3%). Decreased insight was found in 10.2-11.4%. Hypnagogia was reported by 9.0-10.6%, and bereavement hallucinations by 2.8%. Despite a low prevalence of delusions (7.0%), these phenomena were significantly associated with recent hallucinations, observed in up to 13.4% of the participants with hallucinations during the past week (p < 0.001). Our results indicate a wide variety of the phenomenology of hallucinations in the general population and support the existence of a phenomenological continuum.
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Registered trials
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