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Consensus Definition of Misophonia A Delphi Study

Misophonia was named and described in the early 2000’s (Jastreboff and Jastreboff, 2001, 2002) and has since gained scientific recognition and clinical identification across a wide variety of disciplines (e.g., audiology, neuroscience, occupational therapy, psychiatry, and psychology). To the layperson, misophonia could be narrowly understood as a strong dislike of certain sounds, such as chewing. However, despite a common appreciation that misophonia is present in individuals when specific sensory input, such as a particular sound, leads to strong emotional and physical responses, researchers and clinicians have characterized the disorder differently (e.g., Jastreboff and Jastreboff, 2002; Edelstein et al., 2013; Schröder et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2014; Brout et al., 2018). Scientific research investigating misophonia has been conducted for fewer than 20 years and the literature on misophonia has only recently surpassed 100 peer-reviewed papers. During this early phase of research, misophonia has been defined by different criteria with variable methods used to diagnose and assess symptom severity. As a result of this fundamental lack of consensus regarding how misophonia is defined and evaluated, comparisons between study cohorts are not possible, measurement tools have not been well psychometrically validated, and the field cannot rigorously assess the efficacy of different treatment approaches.