MORE THAN one in five Irish children between the ages of 11 and 13 have reported hearing voices, a sign regarded by experts as a risk factor for mental illness.
While the voices tend to stop for most young people as they grow older, those who continue to experience them face a much higher risk of developing a psychiatric disorder, according to experts.
The findings are contained in a study funded by the Health Research Board and published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
The research team assessed nearly 2,500 children, aged between 11 and 16 years, in both school-based surveys and in-depth interviews around the country.
They found that between 21 and 23 per cent of younger adolescents (aged 11-13 years) had experienced hearing voices.
Follow-up clinical assessments found that just over half of these children – 57 per cent – were found to have a psychiatric disorder following clinical assessment.
Among older adolescents (aged 13 to 16 years), just 7 per cent reported hearing voices. However, nearly 80 per cent of these older adolescents who heard voices were found to have a psychiatric disorder.
Prof Mary Cannon of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Beaumont Hospital, who led the research team, said the study suggested hearing voices was more common than previously thought.
“In most cases these experiences resolve with time. However, in some children these experiences persist into older adolescence and this seems to be an indicator that they may have a complex mental health issue and require more in-depth assessment,” she said.
Lead researcher on the paper Dr Ian Kelleher said the type of voices young people heard tended to vary from hearing an isolated sentence now and again, to hearing conversations between two or more people lasting several minutes.
“It may present like screaming or shouting, and other times it could sound like whispers or murmurs. It varies greatly from child to child and frequency can be once a month to once every day,” he said.
Dr Kelleher cautioned against undue alarm on the part of parents and said for many children these experiences can be a “blip”, which doesn’t turn out to be an undiagnosed problem.
But for some, he said, symptoms can be a warning sign of serious underlying issues such as depression or behavioural disorders.
He also said outcomes for early intervention when it comes to children are very positive and do not necessarily signify lifelong problems.
