4 ms·

Mysterious hum driving people crazy around the world

• DanBC 13y ago
  > It's a kind of torture; sometimes, you just want to scream," retiree Katie Jacques of Leeds, England, told the BBC. Leeds is one of several places in Great Britain where the Hum has recently appeared. > "It's worst at night," Jacques said. "It's hard to get off to sleep because I hear this throbbing sound in the background. … You're tossing and turning, and you get more and more agitated about it." This is the kind of thing that cognitive behaviour therapy can help with. But because that's a psychological therapy people feel that they are being dismissed. > Being dismissed as crackpots or whiners only exacerbates the distress for these complainants, most of whom have perfectly normal hearing. Sufferers complain of headaches, nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds and sleep disturbances. At least one suicide in the United Kingdom has been blamed on the Hum, the BBC reports. It's a great shame that people are missing out on effective help because of their stigma around psychological illnesses. Just because something has a real world cause doesn't mean that CBT is dismissing it as "all in the head"; it's just giving people tools to help them cope with a distressing situation.