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New Zealand Herald
March 14, 2003
Hallucinations linked to abuse in childhood
by Martin Johnston
Psychiatric
patients who were abused as children are more likely to suffer hallucinations
than those who were not abused, research has found.
They are also far more susceptible to suffering "command hallucinations"
- 17 per cent compared with 2 per cent of the non-abused.
In these hallucinations, the person hears a voice ordering him or her to
commit self-harm or hurt someone else.
"These are the most debilitating hallucinations," one of the researchers,
Dr John Read, said yesterday.
Dr Read is a senior psychology lecturer at Auckland University. The study was published
yesterday in a journal published by the British Psychological Society.
It follows groundbreaking study led by Dr Read and published last year which
linked sexual abuse in childhood to schizophrenia. The latest study is the
first in Australasia to compare abused and non-abused
psychiatric patients.
Nearly half of the 200 community mental health clients studied had been
abused sexually or physically, and almost a third had been abused as
children.
Dr Read said that for those abused as children, hallucinations of vision and
all the other senses were much more common than for the non-abused.
A reason for the difference would be that trauma early in life
sensitised people to stressful situations, especially if they were similar to
the childhood trauma, he said.
"If you have been, say, raped by your step-dad as a child, you are quite
likely to be fearful of sexual situations, or of men in general. "It may be an overreaction because not all men are
a threat but it's not an illness. It's an understandable reaction based on
past life experience."
Also, brain scans had shown that the brains of traumatised children had
similarities to those of many adult schizophrenics.
The brain damage was not permanent and could be resolved with appropriate
counselling in addition to or instead of medicines.
"The key is learning how to regulate the emotions caused by stressful situations."
Another study, from Dr Read and Jan Lothian, published this week in the New
Zealand Journal of Psychology, found that 69 per cent of a group of New Zealand psychiatric patients
who had been abused believed there was a connection between the abuse and
their present mental illness.
But only 17 per cent of the patients thought their psychiatrist or other
mental health worker saw any connection.
Research findings
* Some of the worst symptoms of schizophrenia are more common in psychiatric
patients abused as children than in those who were not abused.
*Records for 200 community mental health clients showed 92 had been sexually
or physically abused. Of the 60 abused as children, many went on to be abused
in adulthood.
* Fifty-three per cent abused as children suffered auditory hallucinations,
compared with 18 per cent of those not abused. The figure rose to 71 per cent
for those sexually abused both in childhood and as adults.
* Thirteen per cent of those sexually abused as children had hallucinations
of touch, such as insects crawling on them or objects entering them, compared
with none of the non-abused.
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New Zealand Herald
March 18, 2003
Dr Read's latest flight of imagination
by Gordon Waugh
Ever
since clinical psychologists began to manufacture victims, they have filled
libraries with journals, papers and studies purporting to link causes of adult
problems to childhood abuse. The assumptions and beliefs on which they rely
have misled the public. They eschew evidence-based scientific research.
Dr John Read's latest flight of imagination (Mar 14) links hallucinations
in psychiatric patients to childhood abuse and purports to compare
abused and non-abused patients. He claims that nearly half of the 200
community mental health clients studied had been abused sexually or
physically.
Why didn't your health reporter ask the critical question "Where is the
proof that they were in fact abused ?"
Read's "research" has consistently failed to provide independent corroboration
or testable evidence of such abuse, yet has recklessly linked abuse to
schizophrenia and now links abuse to hallucinations of vision and all other
senses. Until he can provide acceptable proof of abuse, he has again misled
the public. This reflects poorly on academic standards at the University of Auckland.
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