Effect of attention training with distractors on the reduction of auditory hallucinations:: a pilot study of three cases

Despite the effectiveness of anti-psychotic pharmacotherapy, residual hallucinations do not vanish completely in some medicated patients. Additional psychological therapies such as training in coping strategies seem to improve the management of auditory hallucinations, nevertheless, despite the promising results, training in coping strategies has some problems like the short duration of their effects, the lack of generalization of results to other situations, the subjective nature of the symptom and the scarce control exerted by the therapist. In this study a controlled environment was designed. Subjects who suffered hallucinations received auditory stimulation similar to their voices and at the same time they performed an attention computerized task. The participants had to focus their attention on the task ignoring the auditory information and, in this way, try to reduce or eliminate their hallucinations. Three patients suffering persistent auditory hallucinations during the last six months participated in this pilot study obtaining a significant improvement in the majority of the parameters assessed about the hallucination after the treatment.