Multi-dimensional Changes in Auditory Verbal Hallucination during Antipsychotic Treatment of Schizophrenic Patients / 신경정신의학

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) is knoun for its high prevalence and difficulty in evaluation. Authors hypothesized that it may be possible to find useful dimensions of AVH that reflect the clinical status of schizophrenic patients by assessing the multi-dimensional changes and linguistic forms' of AVH during antipsychotic treatment. METHODS: 33 schizophrenic patients with AVH were selected and periodically assessed with the 11 items of hallucinations subscale of 'The Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales (PSYRATS)'. In addition, to assess the linguistic forms observed in the AVH, the evaluations of sentence structure of AVH reported by the patients were conducted. RESULTS: PSYRATS showed the multidimensionality inherent in AVH. The changes in the quantitative dimensions did not correlate well with patients' subjective distress. However, qualitative changes in the cognitive and emotional dimensions showed more favorable correlation with clinical course of the patient. The sentence structures of AVH showed tendency to change from "sentence" to "non-sentence" type with overall improvement during treatment. CONCLUSION: Multi-dimensional approach to AVH can give us more information about the changing patterns of multi-faceted structure of AVH and clinical status of patients than one-dimensional or categorical approach.