What Are Hallucinations?

Question: What Are Hallucinations?

Answer: The word "hallucination" comes from Latin and means "to wander mentally." Hallucinations have been defined as the "perception of a nonexistent object or event" and "sensory experiences that are not caused by stimulation of the relevant sensory organs."

In layman's terms, hallucinations involve hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling and even tasting things that are not real. However, auditory hallucinations (hearing voices or other sounds that have no physical source) are the most common type.

Hallucinations are most often associated with the mental illness schizophrenia. However, hallucinations may also occur for those with bipolar disorder when either depression or mania has psychotic features. Hallucinations are one possible characteristic specifically of Bipolar I Disorder; other less severe types of manic depression (Bipolar II and Cyclothymia, for example) by definition exclude the presence of hallucinations.

Examples of Hallucinations

• I don't see pink cartoon bunnies, but sometimes when manic or hypomanic I think I see things like motion peripherally where there is none or stuff moving in the reflections in mirrors. I think I hear my name or weird unclear snatches of noise. It makes me paranoid and then I see more stuff, but I don't actually see anything. It's more like a visual or auditory twitch.

  --Pixxelpuss on our Main Forum

• I've had hallucinations during depression which involve seeing dead, decaying flesh on people's faces. I've also had auditory hallucinations (i.e., hearing "voices") during a mixed episode. The voices have a buzzing sound, and it seems like there are thousands of them. They are talking about me, but I can't make out what they say. And sometimes, while extremely agitated, I think I hear a voice whispering my name.

  --Dana on our Main Forum

_{Sources:
Carlson, N. R. (1998). Physiology of Behavior (6th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Davis, S. F., & Palladino, J. J. (2000). Psychology (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Papolos, D. F., & Papolos, J. (1999). The Bipolar Child. New York, NY: Broadway Books.}