Hallucinations in borderline personality disorder and common mental disorders

Abstract

Hallucinations are classically associated with psychotic disorders. Recent research, however, has highlighted that hallucinations frequently occur outside of the context of psychosis. Despite this, to our knowledge, there has been no epidemiological research to compare the prevalence of hallucinations across common mental disorders with the prevalence in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Using data from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (n = 7403), we investigated the prevalence of hallucinations in individuals with a range of mental disorders and BPD. Hallucinations were prevalent in all disorders (range 11-24%). Hallucinations were no more prevalent in individuals with BPD (13.7%) than in individuals with a (non-psychotic) mental disorder (12.6%) (χ² = 0.03, P = 0.92).