Is there Treatment for Misophonia?
- There have been numerous and various kinds of mental and other health providers who claim success with misophonia treatment without any scientific backing
- As stated on the Duke Misophonia and Emotion Regulation website, currently there are no apps, medications or other “cures”
- However, in the last year we have seen funding for research, and we have great hope for treatment based and translational research
- Note: Exposure therapy (specifically graded exposure therapy) is not an appropriate treatment
- Please be wary of both uninformed therapists and doctors
- A cross-disciplinary approach often the best to develop coping skills
While there is no current treatment for misophonia, providers can learn to help sufferers through our Clinician’s course.
Misophonia Coping Skills Class with Shaylynn Hayes-Raymond
Misophonia Matters is an advocacy-based coping skills class, book, and workbook for adults, teens, and clinicians by long-time advocate Shaylynn Hayes-Raymond. Shaylynn has been advocating for misophonia since 2015 and moved to a career in counselling based on her experiences as a misophonia advocate and sufferer of the disorder. The Misophonia Matters approach includes advocacy, psychoeducation, sensory-based skills, and cognitive and psychological skills. Worksheets are presented throughout the program. Central to Misophonia Matters is the idea that while we cannot treat and prevent misophonia, we can learn to navigate and adapt to our world through accommodation, coping skills, and an empathetic advocacy-based approach.
Take the class on demand. Or, find a live class.
Different Fields Involved in Misophonia Coping/Understanding
Audiology
- Audiologists can: evaluate for misophonia as well as any additional auditory issues
- Can provide devices (ex: in-ear white noise-generators) and recommend sound-producing apps for sound therapy (Meltzer & Herzfeld, 2014)
- Many audiologists ask children to wear the sound generators so that they can hear conversation while decreasing their ability to hear their trigger sounds
Cognitive Therapy
- Offers evidence-based strategies for the treatment of other psychiatric disorders that may be applied to misophonia, such as mindfulness, distress tolerance skills, interpersonal skill interventions, and cognitive reappraisal
- However, rarely works alone because of top/down issue
Coping Skills with Multidisciplinary Team
- Individuals with misophonia may benefit from a team-based approach in which an individualized coping skills plan is drawn from clinician collaboration across the fields of clinical psychology, psychiatry, audiology, occupational therapy, neurology, and neuropsychology
About Diagnosis in General
- Diagnosis is not easy because classification is extremely difficult
- Symptoms overlap with so many different neurological, mental health, and medical disorders
- Certain conditions can be ruled in/ruled out via blood test and other medical tests
- Seeing the explosion of genetic testing
- Many disorders have multiple genes
- Many disorders are epigenetic (genes can be activated or turned off via the environment)
- Even genetic testing, which sounds as though it would be accurate, can be difficult
- We have entered a time in which brain differences and other neural and physiologic testing will help with diagnosing
- However, this is an extremely slow transition and not reflected yet in the DSM-5 or ICD-11 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- American Psychiatric Association and International Classification of Diseases – World Health Organization)
We look for a differential diagnosis – the process of distinguishing conditions in which symptoms overlap.
