Misophonia: A Disorder for Social World

Abstract

Dear Editor,

Chewing, coughing, breathing, typing are activities that produce low level sounds and these audible activities are frequently encountered in the society. These background sounds are usually ignored in public places or at home. Some people may not ignore and perceive these sounds and become disgusted. Reasons of disgust are distraction and anger. Tension might be followed by anger which may then generate urge to leave the environment or intercept the background noise. Sensitivity to the group of background noise is called misophonia.^1-3 The term consists of two words: misos (strong hate or disgust) and phonia (sound) and was introduced by Margaret and Pavel Jastreboff in 2001.⁴

It was aimed to present and discuss two cases of misophonia in this letter to the editor.

The first case was a young man with generalized anxiety disorder. He was also suffering from misophonia and misophonia triggered anger. He reported that particularly his family life was devastated because of his anger.

The second patient was suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and misophonia. She reported that she was counting to ten, breathing slowly or leaving the environment as soon as possible, if she cannot relax. She was frequently listening music with headphones in public places to avoid from disgusting sounds. Both patients reported that they could not express themselves during their disgust, because of inhibiting themselves due to the fear of being called crazy.

Misophonia is defined as immediate negative psychological responses to certain sounds that most people do not notice.^1-3 This novel psychopathology is proposed to be involved with dysregulation of emotional processing with a neurobiological basis.⁵ Current classification systems have not defined misophonia yet and it is not clear whether it is a distinct entity or a dimension or symptom domain which accompany other disorders.³ Post-traumatic stress disorder was the most frequently accompanying disorder in a recent large-scale study.⁶ Accordingly, other psychopathologies may trigger or enhance the responses and therefore misophonia might be a dimensional concept. Misophonia may deteriorate quality of life and social functioning and thus should be further investigated.^1-3,5 A Google search with the key words “misophonia treatment” retrieved 217 results in the date of January 12th. 8 of the web pages’ name was including the term “misophonia”. Increased awareness of this problem would be useful in order to develop better treatments.^7,8

 

Keywords

• Misophonia,anger,generalized anxiety disorder,obsessive-compulsive disorder

Mizofoni: Sosyal Dünyada Bir Bozukluk

Öz

References

1. 1. Edelstein M, Brang D, Rouw R, Ramachandran VS. Misophonia: physiological investigations and case descriptions. Front Hum Neurosci 2013;7:296.
2. 2. Johnson PL, Webber TA, Wu MS, Lewin AB, Murphy TK, Storch EA. When selective audiovisual stimuli become unbearable: a case series on pediatric misophonia. Neuropsychiatry 2013;3:569–75.
3. 3. Schröder A, Vulink N, Denys D. (2013). Misophonia: diagnostic criteria for a new psychiatric disorder. PLoS ONE 2013;8:e54706.
4. 4. Jastreboff PJ, Jastreboff MM. Tinnitus retraining therapy for patients with tinnitus and decreased sound tolerance. Otolaryngol Clin North Am 2003;36:321–36.
5. 5. Kumar S, Tansley-Hancock O, Sedley W, Winston JS, Callaghan MF, Allen M, Cope TE, Gander PE, Bamiou DE, Griffiths TD. The Brain Basis for Misophonia.Curr Biol 2017;27(4):527-33.
6. 6. Rouw R, Erfanian M. A Large-Scale Study of Misophonia. J Clin Psychol2017 (In Press). doi: 10.1002/jclp.22500.
7. 7. http://www.misophonia.com/ (access date: January 12th, 2018)
8. 8. http://www.misophonia-uk.org/dealing-with-misophonia.html (access date: January 12th, 2018)