How Common is Misophonia, and is it Currently a Formally Diagnosable Condition?

How common is misophonia, and is it currently a formally diagnosable condition?

Prevalence studies conducted across the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, India, and other regions consistently indicate that approximately 5% of the population experiences misophonia to a degree that meaningfully impacts daily life. This makes misophonia more prevalent than several better-known conditions, including OCD, autism, and Tourette syndrome, despite far lower public and clinical awareness. Misophonia was only named in 2001, remained largely unnoticed in the audiological literature for over a decade, and has only seen active, rigorous research in the past five to ten years.

Despite this prevalence, misophonia is not currently included in the DSM-5, DSM-5-TR, ICD-10, or ICD-11, though an ICD-11 entry has been proposed and is under review. In the absence of an official diagnostic code, clinicians rely on freely available, validated screening and severity measures, such as the MisoQuest, the Duke Misophonia Questionnaire, and the S-Five, to assess the condition's impact, sometimes coding it as a catch-all diagnosis like unspecified anxiety disorder for billing purposes.