Is there such a thing as a noise sensitivity disorder?

Answer 1

yes


Noise, noise sensitivity and psychiatric disorder: epidemiological and psychophysiological studies.



Academic Department of Psychiatry, University College and Middlesex School of Medicine, London.

Noise, a prototypical environmental stressor, has clear health effects in causing hearing loss but other health effects are less evident. Noise exposure may lead to minor emotional symptoms but the evidence of elevated levels of aircraft noise leading to psychiatric hospital admissions and psychiatric disorder in the community is contradictory. Despite this there are well documented associations between noise exposure and changes in performance, sleep disturbance and emotional reactions such as annoyance. Moreover, annoyance is associated with both environmental noise level and psychological and physical symptoms, psychiatric disorder and use of health services. It seems likely that existing psychiatric disorder contributes to high levels of annoyance. However, there is also the possibility that tendency to annoyance may be a risk factor for psychiatric morbidity. Although noise level explains a significant proportion of the variance in annoyance, the other major factor, confirmed in many studies, is subjective sensitivity to noise. Noise sensitivity is also related to psychiatric disorder. The evidence for noise sensitivity being a risk factor for psychiatric disorder would be greater if it were a stable personality characteristic, and preceded psychiatric morbidity. The stability of noise sensitivity and whether it is merely secondary to psychiatric disorder or is a risk factor for psychiatric disorder as well as annoyance is examined in two studies in this monograph: a six-year follow-up of a group of highly noise sensitive and low noise sensitive women; and a longitudinal study of depressed patients and matched control subjects examining changes in noise sensitivity with recovery from depression. A further dimension of noise effects concerns the impact of noise on the autonomic nervous system. Most physiological responses to noise habituate rapidly but in some people physiological responses persist. It is not clear whether this sub-sample is also subjectively sensitive to noise and whether failure to habituate to environmental noise may also represent a biological indicator of vulnerability to psychiatric disorder. In these studies noise sensitivity was found to be moderately stable and associated with current psychiatric disorder and a disposition to negative affectivity. Noise sensitivity levels did fall with recovery from depression but still remained high, suggesting an underlying high level of noise sensitivity. Noise sensitivity was related to higher tonic skin conductance and heart rate and greater defence/startle responses during noise exposure in the laboratory. Noise sensitive people attend more to noises, discriminate more between noises, find noises more threatening and out of their control, and react to, and adapt to noises more slowly than less noise sensitive people.

Answer 2

It could be APD Auditory processing disorder. When people talk the brain can recieve it in fragments or have trouble processing what the person said. Especially if people mumble and don't actually say the word fully it can be hard. It kind of feels like the brain is having trouble connecting. Since some people don't know much about APD they will assume it belongs in the ADD or ADHD category which it does not what so ever belong there.

Answer 3

Yes, and I have found 2 books on this topic, from the cambridge library in NY. : Noise, noise sensitivity and psychiatric disorder : epidemiological and psychophysiological

Answer 4

Surely. I struggled with a hearing disability many years. People
tell me turn the TV up so I can hear it. But I have auditory nerve
damage and a loud TV hurts me.
I sometimes think all the noise pollution , and visual sights of a Big City are in fact causing a sensory overload. Causing the nervous system to break down, resulting in many of these social anxiety types of disorders.

Answer 5

I doubt it is psychological.
It seems to me a physical thing. Your ear reaches an uncomfortable level of noise and sends a message to the brain,

"I'M being injured so it's time to cover me up and get outta here."

Some people are more sensitive than others regarding noise, some in regards to sunlight, etc.....

One of the guys I worked with had to wear ear plugs all the time or he would get a terrible ear ache and then a headache just from the noise!

Answer 6

yes if fact there is , a guy in my therapy group is very sensitive to noise, so sensitive that he wears ear plugs most of the time,, and takes zanax also my brother and daughter cant stand noise but they arent as bad as the guy with the earplugs.

Answer 7

Many of the students I work with that have aspergers or pdd (pervasive developmental disorder) also have noise sensitivity issues. So much so that many of them wear instruments to muffle out sounds.

Answer 8

Yes, but it could be hyperacusis. I suffer from tinnitus and have bouts of hyperacusis when the smallest noise drives me up a wall.

Answer 9

That must be what I have. Noise hurts. Coughing, or sharp sounds. Bring physical pain.

Answer 10

yes, it involves hearing beyond the normal human threshood and hearing by bone conduction, I have a form of it, I hear a train coming 2 miles away. Most people only are aware of it half mile away.

Bass penetrates me by bone conduction and is painfull to me and drives me absolutely to despair.

I am also tone deaf and do not know most voices and sometimes cannot tell male or female

Answer 11

must be. I cannot stand high pitched sounds. Literally hurts my ears.