DENMARK: VOICES FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Olga Runciman is an international trainer and speaker as well as writer, campaigner and artist. She sees the hearing voices movement as post-psychiatric, working towards the recognition of human rights while offering hope, empowerment and access to making sense of one’s experiences on an individual level. She has worked extensively with trauma and abuse, voice hearing and other sensory experiences, as well as healing and recovery.

She is a board member of the Danish Psychosocial Rehabilitation network and the Danish organisation for Users and Psychiatric Survivors. She is a co-founder and board member of the Danish Hearing Voices network.

In the everyday, Olga is a psychiatric nurse working in social psychiatry, a soon-to-be certified psychologist as well as a psychiatric survivor. She lives in Copenhagen with her partner and two cats, and when she has a spare minute you can usually find her out and about camera in hand photographing. She is also a voice hearer.

Olga Runciman Colonization or Postpsychiatry?

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May 9, 2013

I believe the video ‘Voices Matter’ has, quite apart from capturing the spirit of the Hearing Voices movement, filmed the first signs, the first moments of professional interest, hinting at the dangers that inevitably are present when a movement threatens the established order of things.
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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Disorders, Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents, Hearing Voices, Industry

Olga Runciman Rape Seed Oil

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November 26, 2012

I am interviewing people on their subjective experience of taking psychiatric drugs; something which has been of little interest in the world of research, as psychiatry prefers to define the truth of those they subjugate while turning a blind eye to the appalling consequences their ‘truth’ has on the lives of so many. Life stories are blithely brushed aside as inconsequential and yet here I am listening to the shattering narratives of childhoods lost and then as adults being labeled and negated all of which has inspired me to write this piece…
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Categorized in: Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: , , , ,

Olga Runciman “May you live in interesting times”

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September 25, 2012

Denmark has the dubious honor of being the country that has had the most people lobotomized and sterilized in relation to population number, yet has been able to maintain an aura of compassionate care until fairly recently. What is not generally known is that Denmark is the world leader in the number of people incapacitated by mental health issues and placed on support. These past months the government has been negotiating one of its most ambitious cutbacks on the disability pensions in Danish history. Why are we suddenly talking of rehabilitation now? Was not the whole purpose of psychiatry to help people get better so that they could get on with their lives? What then has psychiatry been doing until now?
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Categorized in: Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents

Olga Runciman Not Tea with the Queen, but Wine

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June 26, 2012

On the 19th of June I attended a garden party; however it was not just any kind of party, it was a once in a life time party. I was invited by the Queen of Denmark and the Prince, to attend their garden party at Fredensborg Castle.
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Olga Runciman The Judge and the Jury

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June 7, 2012

A short while ago I was given the opportunity to be a trainee for a day as part of my psychology internship while on leave from my job as a psychiatric nurse. I accompanied a judge, a representative from the medical organization and a representative from SIND (middle of the road mental health charity) to meet with four psychiatric patients who had all filed a complaint against forced treatment or incarceration. The purpose of this meeting was for the Judge to assess whether the psychiatric hospital had followed the rules. Not the grievance of the patient who filed the complaint which is what most people believe happens
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Olga Runciman Fe Fi Fo Fum, I Smell the Wiff of a Eugenics Drum!

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April 8, 2012

Lundbeck Foundation has donated its biggest grant ever to Danish psychiatric research, a grant which breaks all Danish records for financed psychiatric research. The project, to be known as ‘The Lundbeck Foundation’s Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research’ (iPSYCH)’ will receive 121 million kroner over a three year period with more to come should the research prove promising. The purpose of this research? ”We will investigate why some people develop mental disorders. We will identify biological disease mechanisms, and we also intend to provide the basis for better treatment and prevention”
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Olga Runciman Stolen by the System

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March 15, 2012

Tomorrow is another day and I know that I will once again start to build up the bricks of hope, but today, I just cry as I bicycle home in the icy cold wind with the first snowflakes of the day beginning to fall. Deep inside I feel the flames licking at my icy rage at the injustice of a system purporting cure but which is in reality the stealer of souls.
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Olga Runciman My Voice, the Voice of Me

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February 20, 2012

This is the second and last part of ‘The Voices of Me.’ Recovery. ‘I was a schizophrenic they said “please remember that, oh, and while you are at it, remember to stop thinking there is a cure, you are a chronic, a chronic schizophrenic, a biological defect with an incurable disease.”’
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents

Olga Runciman The Voices of Me

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February 6, 2012

It was asked of me and I subsequently felt inspired to contribute to an anthology about me and my voices, two things which are so separate and yet so together. How did I survive them and yet how could I not?
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents