Table 1.

Disorders most frequently involved in the differential diagnosis of misophonia.

Disorder		Similarities with Misophonia	Differences with Misophonia
Psychiatric disorder	Specific phobia	A triggering stimulus may evoke a negative response, as well as avoidance behaviors.	In specific phobia, one experiences mostly anxiety and fear, whereas with misophonia a high degree of anger and aggression is perceived [20].
	Phonophobia	Fear of a specific sound.	The main symptom is not anxiety or fear as in phonophobia, but the feeling of irritation, disgust, or anger [10,20].
	Social phobia	Habitual avoidance of social situations, due to experiencing anxiety and stress.	In social phobia, the reason is a hypersensitivity towards negative social evaluation; whereas in misophonia, the social situation is avoided to prevent an encounter with the misophonic sound [20].
	Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)	Aversive reaction to a stimulus and avoidance behaviors are shared.	The person with PTSD had to experience a traumatic event. In the case of misophonia, no such association has been demonstrated [20,35].
	Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)	They share an excessive preoccupation towards a specific stimulus, as well as the feeling of anxiety.	People with OCD often perform compulsive behaviors to reduce anxiety. In their case, there are no behaviors such as aggression and anger that may occur in misophonia.
	Intermittent explosive disorder	Here, the shared factor is anger.	In misophonia, the triggering stimulus of anger is always a sound, for explosive disorder it can be any stimulus. Loss of control does not usually occur in misophonia [20].
	Eating behavior disorders	The most frequent emotional trigger in misophonia, as in the TCA, is food.	For the person with misophonia, the trigger is the sound of food, for ED, it is the ingestion of food [23].
	Obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)	The shared factors are anger or aggression.	People with misophonia respond to the same auditory stimulus, people with OCPD do not relate to triggering sounds [20].
	Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)	Auditory hyper-reactivity is observed.	People with ASD show intolerance to unexpected and loud noises. People with misophonia can react to any type of auditory stimulus [20].
	Sensory processing disorder (SPD)	Auditory hyper-reactivity is observed.	The person with TPS reacts to unexpected and loud noises, there is also hyper-reactivity to other stimuli. The person with misophonia reacts to any auditory stimulus [20].
	Personality disorders with impulsive aggression	Difficulty in controlling anger and impulsivity occurs.	The reactions are not necessarily related to a specific sound, as is the case with misophonia [55].
Auditive disorder	Tinnitus	Can provoke negative emotions; anxiety.	It is perceived in one or both ears in the absence of acoustic source [9].
	Hyperacusis	Negative reaction to any auditory stimulus with physical characteristics (loudness and frequency) [55].	The stimulus characteristics are neutral or of very low frequency and intensity and context-independent [3,56].