The scientists studying misophonia believe so, because of the terrible effects they see in their patients. When there’s still so much uncertainty in the tiny community of misophonia researchers, is it actually helpful to refer to misophonia as its own separate disorder? It’s a pretty new disorder, and not much research has been done on it. To be honest, this debate about the treatments and nature of misophonia didn’t surprise me. “It would be a good idea” to evaluate therapies through controlled trials, he says, adding that “somebody hopefully will do that in the future.” For now, the Jastreboffs are both stymied by the “ten million dollars” he says it would take. Not to say that Pawel Jastreboff is unaware of these limitations. Her team reported successfully treating two young patients using cognitive behavioral therapy-a well-established form of psychotherapy that helps patients recognize distressing thoughts and develop healthier behaviors in response to those thoughts. But when it comes to therapy, she has some qualified hope. Wu has reservations about prescribing medication before we know more. So if misophonia is a psychiatric disorder, I wondered, could it be treated with medication or therapy? Schröder told me that almost half of these patients also met the criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. They had examined 42 patients who self-referred with misophonia, and found a consistent syndrome: Specific sounds triggered an aggressive response and socially isolating coping mechanisms. They suggested categorizing it on the spectrum with OCD. In 2013, psychiatrist Arjan Schröder and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam proposed that misophonia should be classified as a new psychiatric disorder. However, Wu’s study wasn’t the first to suggest a connection between mental illness and misophonia. But I was surprised by the connection to OCD, an anxiety disorder involving intrusive thoughts and the overwhelming need to soothe them with coping behaviors. I could understand people feeling anxious and depressed because of misophonia. Intriguingly, Wu also found that misophonia symptoms tracked with symptoms of the psychiatric conditions anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. That high of a number surprised me at first, but then again, I can totally understand why people don’t talk about what feels like a crazy, aggressive overreaction to lip-smacking (urgh). Sadly, half of those with clinical symptoms-about 10 percent of all the students-reported that they had significant trouble functioning at school and work. They also used similar coping mechanisms. The Florida students with significant symptoms had “this extreme reaction to really selective sound stimuli,” says Wu-stimuli like the mouthy noises described in Edelstein’s study. Wu and her colleagues found that a full 20 percent of the students reported what the researchers considered clinically significant misophonia symptoms.
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