Problems in Assessing Musical Hallucinations

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Sir: Hermesh and colleagues¹ recently introduced a questionnaire for assessing musical hallucinations (the Geha Short Interview for Musical Hallucinations [GSIMH]) and reported a high prevalence of these phenomena in psychiatric outpatients and even a prevalence of 41.4% in those with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Discussing these interesting and surprising results, the authors stated that only further studies, using the GSIMH with other designated tools for assessing musical hallucinations, will clarify the issue of whether their instrument is reliable. However, upon examining the 2 questions they used to assess musical hallucinations, some suggestions to improve their questionnaire could be made already.’ ‹