Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ArticlesHallucinatory Experiences in a Community Sample of Japanese Children
Section snippets
METHOD
The 761 Japanese children (400 boys and 361 girls) in this study, ranging from 11 to 12 years of age, were public school students in five elementary schools randomly selected from different areas in the Aichi prefecture in Japan. No subject attended a special class or was mentally retarded. Subjects were asked by their teacher to complete a battery of four measures in their homeroom: (1) a questionnaire designed by the authors concerning hallucinatory experiences, (2) the Children's Depression
RESULTS
Subjects who did not meet the decided criteria for hallucinations were excluded from all analysis. Subjects who failed to answer any item of any measure were also excluded because missing data occurred randomly. Consequently, of a total of 761 original subjects, 380 (49.9%) were included.
DISCUSSION
Approximately 21% of the subjects in this study reported having experienced hallucinations. The prevalence of hallucinations in this study is a little lower than that of studies that used the questionnaire method; for example, Ross et al. (1990) found a prevalence of 26% in the general population, and Altman et al. (1997) found a rate of 33% in a subclinical population aged 13 to 21 years. Nevertheless, the rate found in this study is much higher than that of previous studies that used the
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The authors thank Barry Nurcombe, M.D., and Per-Anders Rydelius M.D., Ph.D., for suggestions for improving this article and Nagoya City's education board, the elementary schools, and the students for their cooperation with the research.