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Poorer Well-Being in Children With Misophonia: Evidence From the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents - PubMed

  • ️Sat Jan 01 2022

Poorer Well-Being in Children With Misophonia: Evidence From the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents

Louisa J Rinaldi et al. Front Psychol. 2022.

Abstract

Objective: Misophonia is an unusually strong aversion to a specific class of sounds - most often human bodily sounds such as chewing, crunching, or breathing. A number of studies have emerged in the last 10 years examining misophonia in adults, but little is known about the impact of the condition in children. Here we set out to investigate the well-being profile of children with misophonia, while also presenting the first validated misophonia questionnaire for children.

Materials and methods: We screened 142 children (10-14 years; Mean 11.72 SD 1.12; 65 female, 77 male) using our novel diagnostic [the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents (SMS-Adolescent)]. This allowed us to identify a group of children already manifesting misophonia at that age - the first population-sampled cohort of child misophonics examined to date. Children and their parents also completed measures of well-being (for convergent validation of our SMS-Adolescent) and creative self-construct (for discriminant validation).

Results: Data show that children with misophonia have significantly elevated levels of anxiety and obsessive compulsive traits. Additionally children with misophonia have significantly poorer life-satisfaction, and health-related quality of life. As predicted, they show no differences in creative self-construct.

Conclusion: Together our data suggest the first evidence in population sampling of poorer life outcomes for children with misophonia, and provide preliminary convergent and discriminant validation for our novel misophonia instrument. Our data suggest a need for greater recognition and therapeutic outlets for adolescents with misophonia.

Keywords: aversion; misophonia; sensory sensitivity; sound-sensitivity; wellbeing.

Copyright © 2022 Rinaldi, Smees, Ward and Simner.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1

Means plot showing differences between misophonics (shown in triangle) and controls (shown in circles) in each of the SCARED subscales (from left to right: Panic Disorder, General Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Social Anxiety, and School Avoidance).

FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2

Means plot showing greater scores for misophonics (shown in triangle) and controls (shown in circles) in each of the OCI subscales (from left to right: Washing, Checking and Doubting, Hoarding, Ordering, Obsessing, and Neutralizing). Here and in all similar figures, means are shown with black circles/triangles, while grey points represent the raw data, with overlapping points appearing darker. Here and throughout, error bars show 95% confidence intervals, and the asterisks represent significant p values as follows: * < 0.05, ** < 0.01, and *** < 0.001.

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