A study of reported hallucinations in a southeastern county

In traditional Western psychiatric theory, seeing or hearing things that other people do not think are there could be termed a hallucination which is often considered indicative of underlying psychopathology. The psychiatric interpretation of pathological meanings of these experiences for an individual can be contrasted with an anthropologic approach which considers whether there are underlying cultural influences to account for certain distributions of reported hallucinations and their content and to ask about the social and spiritual, as well as psychologic, meanings of such experiences. This paper presents data on reported hallucinations in a random sample of the general population of a county in north central Florida. When the results of the questions on hallucinations were compared in relation to sociodemographic variables, it was found that hallucinations were more commonly reported by the young, by blacks, by members of the lower socioeconomic quintiles and by those belonging to certain church types. These data will be discussed from the complementing and contrasting psychiatric and anthropologic viewpoints.