Misophonia in a large treatment-seeking child and adolescent sample in mental health care in Germany and Austria

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Background
Misophonia is a newly conceptualized disorder. Although its onset is usually in childhood and early adolescence, the current knowledge about etiology or treatment options for children and adolescents is still limited. This is the first study investigating treatment-seeking children and adolescents in routine mental health care with regard to misophonia symptomatology and co-occurring symptoms.

Methods
In this multi-center cross-sectional study, conducted in Germany and Austria, N = 214 participants completed measures on misophonia, anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, chronic irritability, quality of life and functional impairment. The probable misophonia subsample also reported on current coping strategies and situations in which the misophonia related problems were most evident.

Results
In the overall sample, 90.19% of the participants reported being bothered by at least one (misophonia-relevant) repetitive sound and 31.28% scored above the clinical cut-off for probable misophonia. In the probable misophonia subsample, 96.97% showed clinically significant co-occurring symptoms such as anxiety. The probable misophonia subsample reported significantly higher scores on all co-occurring symptom scales as well as higher functional impairment and lower quality of life, compared with the non-misophonia subsample. Most misophonia-related problems occurred in the company of other people (mostly classmates (68.18%)). The most frequent coping strategies were listening to music (57.81%) and leaving the room (25.00%).

Discussion
The high rates of reported salient repetitive sounds and misophonia symptoms in routine mental health care, particularly in comparison to non–treatment-seeking populations, highlight the need for an awareness of the disorder in mental health services, and further research on feasible diagnostic and treatment approaches for misophonia and co-occurring symptoms in children and adolescents.