Cognition Emotion Neuroscience Laboratory

Chicago Hallucination Assessment Tool (CHAT)

The Chicago Hallucination Assessment Tool (CHAT) is a semi-structured interview designed to gather quantitative, and optionally qualitative, information regarding the severity of hallucinatory experiences. The target population for its use is psychiatric patients. The CHAT is structured in two primary parts. The first is a series of screening questions for hallucinatory experiences in each sensory modality to determine which types of unusual perceptual experiences across the five senses may be hallucinations and should be assessed further. Second, follow-up questions solicit detailed information to help clarify whether experiences are hallucinations and then to quantify their severity. Severity is quantified within each sensory modality as a sum of the item scores, and can also be broken down to scores along three dimensions: Physical, Cognitive, and Emotional severity.

If you use the CHAT, please cite:

Kern et al., (2015). Exchange the magnifying glass for a microscope: The Chicago Hallucination Assessment Tool (CHAT). Schizophrenia Bulletin, 41(suppl 1)., S110.