So what do we do to treat these auditory hallucinations? Many therapies have been tried with varying success, and here I want to present the various methods which have proved successful to some idea. Please realize that there are many different forms of these auditory hallucinations and these therapies are not able to cure all auditory hallucinations.
Drug therapies are based on the assumption that the auditory hallucinations are as a result of some other condition. Therefore, the drugs used to treat other disorders are used to treat the hallucinations also. The neuroleptics such as dopamine antagonists have been used to calm the auditory hallucination effects of schizophrenics. Benzodiazepines have known to initiate musical hallucinations (Fisman, 1991) , but has been shown effective in reducing visual hallucinations at low doses. Imipramine was found to cause musical hallucinations in one case ( Terao, 1995)
In general, drug treatments have had varying effects on different hallucinatory symptoms and when drugs have failed psychological methods have been used. Among the various treatment therapies which have been used are operant procedures, systematic desensitization, thought stopping, altered sensory output, counter stimulation, aversion therapy, earplug therapy and the first person singular therapy. Okay , I realize that all I just said must just sound like gibberish to a lot of people, but we will look into what each of these therapies are about.
Operant procedures refers to the use of different environmental contingencies to alter the behavior produced. Lets break this down a little more. Things that happen to us in our environment affect the way we behave. If you are interested in watching a particularly exciting program on the television you may be under a contingency that you must finish your homework before you can watch T.V. If you really want to watch the T.V. program, you will make sure that you complete your homework before the program comes on. This is an example of the environmental contingency controlling your behavior. A reinforcing event (like watching the T.V. ) can promote another behavior or response when your watching T.V. is placed under the contingency of the other response. Operant procedures are the use of contingencies on personally reinforcing events to make you behave in a particular way. So, this method was used on people suffering from auditory hallucinations to cause them to stop hallucinations.
Systematic desensitization is also a technique used to treat auditory hallucinations. This entails the relation of a bad environmental condition (aversive stimulus) with a more pleasant and less aversive result. This usually causes a decreased aversive reaction to the bad condition and all the responses as a result of that. This system is used especially in auditory hallucinations which seem to brought on by stressful situations. Associated periferally with this is also the newly developed satiation treatment whereby a person with hallucinations would record the number of times the hallucination occurred and would consciously pay attention to it. It has been found to be useful for patients which do not respond to systematic desensitization ( Glaister, 1984).
Thought stopping is another procedure which uses an aversive condition to stop the hearing of auditory hallucinations. This therapy entails punishing the patient for hearing those auditory hallucinations.
Counter stimulation has been found to be an effective way of reducing the occurrence of auditory hallucinations. During this treatment, other auditory stimuli are presented whenever there are auditory hallucinations. I don't thing this therapy is very practical. Imagine what would happen if a person with an auditory hallucination was trying to combat their hallucinations in a public place. The louder the hallucinations were, the more he would have to turn up a real sound stimuli. When the sound stimuli is high enough, any auditory hallucination that is recieved would require him to increase the external sound even more. This could become very disturbing to those around!!
One of the theories of auditory hallucinations was proposed by Paul Green (1978). He proposed that auditory hallucinations represent verbal activity originating in the non-dominant hemisphere and that the dominant hemisphere perceived this verbal activity as foreign, due to a dissociation of the hemispheres in schizophrenia. Some evidence which supports his theory was obtained in an experiment which shows that researchers have found that it is possible to decrease the frequency of auditory hallucinations by providing ear plugs in one side of the ear (Birchwood,1986). He proposed that auditory hallucinations in schizophrenics occurred as a result of defective "interhemispheric integration" in the brain. His therapy was shown to have immediate dramatic effects.