Misophonia: A Disorder for Social World

Year 2018, Volume: 18 Issue: 1, 153 - 154, 30.03.2018

Murat İlhan Atagün Sümeyye İslamoğlu Serdar Süleyman Can

https://doi.org/10.17098/amj.409046

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

Abstract

References

• 1. Edelstein M, Brang D, Rouw R, Ramachandran VS. Misophonia: physiological investigations and case descriptions. Front Hum Neurosci 2013;7:296.
• 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. Schröder A, Vulink N, Denys D. (2013). Misophonia: diagnostic criteria for a new psychiatric disorder. PLoS ONE 2013;8:e54706.
• 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. 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. Rouw R, Erfanian M. A Large-Scale Study of Misophonia. J Clin Psychol2017 (In Press). doi: 10.1002/jclp.22500.
• 7. http://www.misophonia.com/ (access date: January 12th, 2018)
• 8. http://www.misophonia-uk.org/dealing-with-misophonia.html (access date: January 12th, 2018)