Musical Hallucinations: Prevalence in Psychotic and Nonpsychotic Outpatients

Background: Musical hallucinations have been considered a rare manifestation of psychotic states or brain and hearing abnormalities. However, an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) assessment tool refers to musical hallucinations and our preliminary study showed that about one third of OCD patients experienced musical hallucinations.

Aims: To elucidate the lifetime prevalence of musical hallucinations among psychotic and nonpsychotic psychiatric outpatients.

Methods: Lifetime experience of musical hallucinations was examined with a specially designed structured interview in 190 consecutive outpatients with diagnoses of anxiety, affective, and schizophrenia disorders.

Results: Musical hallucinations occurred in more than one fifth of all diagnoses. The prevalence of musical hallucinations was highest in OCD patients (41%). Musical hallucinations were significantly more frequent with more comorbid disorders, and logistic regression revealed that this finding was mainly due to OCD combined with either social phobia or schizophrenia.

Conclusion: Musical hallucinations are more common among psychiatric patients than previously reported and are more suggestive of OCD than of other mental disorders.