The list of mental disorders that can harm our quality of life grows as cases of patients suffering from problems difficult to conceive long ago become known.
Misophonia, or selective sensitivity to low-intensity soundscould be one of the new mental disorders to be added to diagnostic manuals such as the DSM.
Misophonia, which means “hatred of sound,” is described as a mental disturbance that occurs when low-intensity everyday sounds cause too much discomfort. Hearing someone chew, the sound of a pen sliding across paper, or the sound made by certain people who wear rubber soles when they walk on a smooth surface can be torture for people with some form of misophonia, as who have very little tolerance for certain types of auditory stimuli.
Thus, where there is misophonia, there is a tolerance threshold that is too low for certain low-intensity noises, which causes them to trigger a state of stress, anger and strong discomfort in the person who experiences it, depending on the type of noise to which they are exposed. dislike: the noise when chewing, the throat clearing of a person clearing their throat, etc.
The consequences of “sound hatred”
People with misophonia are distinguished from the rest of the population in the degree to which they feel discomfort from everyday sounds that are not heard loud enough to damage the auditory system and generate pain. Many people may notice that “it makes them angry” to hear how their companion chews many times, but people with misophonia come to feel so bad about certain types of sounds that they are capable of modifying their habits so as not to have to listen to them, which many times It leads them to isolate themselves in an area they consider safe, or to use earplugs in certain contexts.
Furthermore, since the connection between auditory stimuli and the appearance of the state of discomfort is so direct, many times they suddenly become in a bad moodwhich can cause arguments within the family or in the circle of friends.
Possible new mental disorder
The first time someone used the term “misophonia” was in 2000, when neuroscientists Pawel and Margaret Jastreboff described a psychological disorder characterized by a low tolerance to specific sounds. Due to the recent nature of this concept, its causes and the level of impact it has on the population are currently unknown. However, it is believed that its cause is found in the brain, where the activation of neurons associated with an auditory stimulus would be associated, in turn, with a stressful or irritating experience. At the moment it has been experimentally shown that people with misophonia show greater electrical conductivity in their skin when they are exposed to sounds that they find stressful, something that does not happen with other individuals. This is an immediate physiological reaction.
Furthermore, the severity of certain cases of misophonia has led in recent years several researchers to defend the idea that this phenomenon should be included in the diagnostic manuals of mental disorders, in order to easily identify this alteration and develop research and treatment programs. on a consensual basis.
At the moment, a tool has already been developed to help identify cases of patients with misophonia, the Misophonia Activation Scalewith 11 degrees of intensity in the symptoms: from the absence of discomfort when listening to a sound to the use of violence triggered by the strong discomfort produced by a noise.
As with tinnitus, The treatment proposals for cases of misophonia are based on proposing strategies to live with this alteration, either through cognitive-behavioral therapy or by teaching specific strategies to protect yourself from the sound that produces aversion without affecting your emotional and family life.
Until a solution is discovered to make the symptoms go away, intervention focuses on teaching coping strategies and ensuring that the family, friends, and co-workers of the person with misophonia are aware of their needs and know what to do. do in each case.
