60 Year Old Family Member Hearing Divine Voices

Reader’s Question

I’d very much appreciate some feedback from you! I have a family member who is 60 and has always been in fairly good health and has never taken any medications. She is spiritual in nature and had recently completed reading Divine Guidance by Doreen Virtue and Neale Walsch’s books.

For several months now, she has been listening to voices in her head claiming to be deities. There are about 2 or 3 voices. During the day, this is fine, but at night, these voices have been interrupting her sleep. The voices can be peaceful, telling her stories, but sometimes appear angry. She also gets visions of these deities when trying to sleep.

The problem is that due to these voices, she is no longer getting peaceful sleep at night. One day she can get 4-5 hours of sleep. The next day, she takes 1-2 hours. She is currently uninsured. Do you have any recommendations? I’d appreciate the feedback.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Your family member would appear to be experiencing hallucinations. While we all have thoughts in our head, those thoughts and inner voices typically don’t assume their own personality or claim to be divine. Those thoughts also don’t have their own mood external to our current mood.

While it’s possible that her spirituality has been amplified by her recent reading interests, her symptoms are beyond what we typically see when that happens. Given her age of sixty years, we would be concerned about age-related neurological changes that might produce the hallucinations.
Hallucinations can also be created by changes in body chemistry, depression, and other medical conditions.

I would recommend consultation with a physician at first, followed by a psychiatrist. She might consult the local community mental health center as those agencies often operate on a sliding fee scale based on ability to pay. The fact that the hallucinations only recently surfaced and are now interrupting her sleep tell us they are likely to increase in terms of frequency, volume and intrusiveness. The sooner you can arrange medical consultation the better.