Aim: This study focuses on the relationship between dysfunctional meta-cognitive beliefs, depression, anxiety and self-esteem and hallucinatory-like experiences among healthy subjects.
Methods: 198 participants (149 women), mostly recruited from universities, took part in the study. Hallucinatory-like experiences were assessed with the Polish version of the Revised Hallucinations Scale (RHS). Based on two sub-scales of RHS that measure visual and auditory hallucinatory-like experiences, two groups were divided: 1--participants with no auditory and visual hallucinatory-like experiences (n = 35) and 2--participants with high frequent hallucinatory-like experiences (n = 40). Meta-cognitive beliefs were assessed with the Metacognitions Questionnaire. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (R-SES) were used for emotional processes assessment. Further correlations between meta-cognitive beliefs, hallucinatory-like experiences and emotional processes were calculated.
Results: Persons with frequent hallucinatory-like experiences tend to exhibit higher dysfunctional meta-cognitive beliefs in comparison to those who had no psychotic-like experiences. Moreover, those who had more frequent hallucinatory-like experiences revealed subclinical depression, were more anxious and exhibit lower level of self-esteem. Besides a total score in the RHS scale, dissociative experiences and auditory and visual perceptual alternations were found to be related to more dysfunctional meta-cognitive beliefs.
Conclusions: Hallucinatory-like experiences among healthy subjects are related to dysfunctional meta-cognitive beliefs. In addition, hallucination-like experiences were found to be linked to emotional dysfunctions, which implies that psychotic-like experiences observed in healthy persons may be of clinical interest.