Hallucinations - Olfactory, Visual, and Somatic

Dr. Sukhi Shergill describes the different types of hallucinations schizophrenic patients can experience.

Patients with schizophrenia experience quite a few types of hallucinations. And what a hallucination means is that you’re having an experience, a perception without actually having a stimulus. So the most common form of this is in the auditory domain - people will typically hear voices talking to them or talking about them. But what they also experience is something we call somatic hallucinations, which is where you’ll feel people touching your arm, our your back, or your skin. So what you’re actually getting is a touch hallucination. Similarly people also describe, although these are more rare in patients with schizophrenia, sometimes they will also experience visual hallucinations where they will see people or things around them. And sometimes they can also experience olfactory hallucinations, which is where they have very peculiar smells. Both visual and olfactory hallucinations are more common in other disorders, rather than schizophrenia. Olfactory hallucinations, where people have funny smells, are more common in epilepsy and visual hallucinations tend to occur more in other disorders such as Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease.