The Voices in Your Head (solution)

by Seth Schoen with research by Chris Ball, j Baumgart, Francis Heaney, Stephanie Schoen, Aaron Swartz, and Vera Yin

The lyrics in each of these song clips, at least if interpreted over-literally, seem to describe a particular mental disorder listed in the DSM-IV-TR manual. The title “Voices in Your Head”, which appears in Laura Branigan’s song “Gloria”, also suggests this; “Voices in My Head” is also the title of at least eight different songs by a variety of different artists.

In some cases the song as a whole makes clear that there is no psychopathology involved, or also mentions or suggests other disorders. In cases of doubt, we use only the lyrics that we’ve quoted, although the identification of some songs’ disorders can also be aided by the song titles. We don’t use a strict interpretation of the diagnostic criteria for these disorders, so some factors that would be required to diagnose a disorder in real life can be absent or not evident.

They are presented in alphabetical order by the name of the disorder:

ICD-9	Diagnosis	Artist	Song title
291.89	Alcohol-Induced Sexual Dysfunction	Dead Kennedys	Too Drunk To Fuck
307.45	Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorder	R.E.M.	Daysleeper
294.10	Dementia Due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Without Behavioral Disturbance	Weezer	Mad Kow
300.6	Depersonalization Disorder	Kraftwerk	Die Mensch Maschine
300.12	Dissociative Amnesia	Britney Spears	Amnesia
300.14	Dissociative Identity Disorder	The Verve	Bittersweet Symphony
302.89	Frotteurism	Regina Spektor	Summer in the City
302.6	Gender Identity Disorder in Children	Dar Williams	When I Was A Boy
300.02	Generalized Anxiety Disorder	Monty Python	I’m So Worried
305.90	Inhalant Abuse	The Ramones	Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
312.32	Kleptomania	Jane’s Addiction	Been Caught Stealing
315.1	Mathematics Disorder	Badly Drawn Boy	One Plus One is One
301.81	Narcissistic Personality Disorder	Falco	Egoist
312.31	Pathological Gambling	The Soggy Bottom Boys	In the Jailhouse Now
302.2	Pedophilia	The Kinks	Art Lover
307.52	Pica	Hannah Fury	Eat the Dirt
309.81	Posttraumatic Stress Disorder	The Cranberries	Zombie
302.75	Premature Ejaculation	Lily Allen	Not Fair
307.44	Primary Hypersomnia	Jason Mraz	Sleep All Day
312.33	Pyromania	Dan Bern	King of the World
315.00	Reading Disorder	Don Henley	Johnny Can’t Read
304.10	Sedative Dependence	The Rolling Stones	Mother’s Little Helper
313.23	Selective Mutism	Norabelle	Checkout Line
302.83	Sexual Masochism	John “Cougar” Mellencamp	Hurts So Good
300.29	Specific Phobia, Animal Type	Life in a Blender	Chicken Dance
307.0	Stuttering	The Who	My Generation
307.23	Tourette’s Disorder	Blink 182	Family Reunion
302.3	Transvestic Fetishism	Monty Python	The Lumberjack Song
312.39	Trichotillomania	Building Rome	Dr. Doctor
302.82	Voyeurism	Blink 182	Voyeur

The sound files are labeled with ICD-9 codes of the disorders they represent (according to DSM-IV-TR), and the arithmetic should be performed with these numeric codes. All of the disorders presented have purely numeric codes; we tragically had to pass on songs referring to the ICD-9 “V codes”, such as Weird Al Yankovic’s “Calling in Sick” for V65.2 Malingering.

In the results of the subtractions, each digit has been replaced by either one or two letters, according to the following scheme. (Each letter consistently stands for the same digit.)

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
IN	EK	C	U	O	GL	S	DY	BJ	AR

The cryptogram at the bottom must be solved by turning digits back into letters. Although there may be two choices of letter to substitute for each digit, the resulting words are individually unambiguous, and the solution to the cryptogram is

049981551/10016/89640/243599/8510719/89757/799
NORABELLE/KINKS/JASON/COUGAR/BLENDER/BADLY/DAR

which refers to the songs

Checkout Line
Art Lover
Sleep All Day
Hurts So Good
Chicken Dance
One Plus One is One
When I Was a Boy

whose initials spell CASH COW.