Hearing Voices

In this piece for The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar profiles the philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, whose work argues that our minds are inseparable...

Results of a large government-funded study call into question current drug heavy approaches to treating people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study, which the New York Times called “by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States,” found that patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education had a greater reduction in symptoms as well as increases in quality of life, and participation in work and school than those receiving the current standard of care.

CBC News reports of the "growing demand" for "Hearing Voices That Are Distressing" workshops in Winnipeg. Article →

This piece for Holistic Elephants discusses the role of social context and environment in our perception and construction of "word salad," a common symptom of psychosis and...

In a commentary piece, Ben Alderson-Day and Nev Jones discuss the AVATAR therapy research for psychosis and propose further questions.

Review compares the effectiveness of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for improving physical health outcomes in people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

In this piece for MetroUK, Lucy Nichol explains how to best support people in "psychosis," emphasizing the need to believe individuals who hear voices and recognize...

Hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms have been reported after methylphenidate (Ritalin) treatment for ADHD.

“Groundbreaking research in New Zealand shows sexual abuse may cause schizophrenia.” "The biggest myth about schizophrenia is that it's a solely biological disorder," co-author...

ServiceNet, a mental health and human service agency in western Massachusetts, received a three year, two million dollar grant to launch a program designed to support young adults who have recently experienced their first episode of psychosis. The Prevention and Recovery Early Psychosis (PREP) program is funded by the Massachusetts department of mental health and is designed to treat psychosis as a symptom, not an illness, resulting from other illnesses, substance abuse, trauma, or extreme stress.

In a Science Update, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) reports that Medicaid services is already taking steps to implement “coordinated specialty care” (CSC) in response to the RAISE study released last week. “The RAISE initiative has shown that coordinated specialty care for first episode psychosis is better than the standard care offered in community clinics. However, covering the cost of coordinated specialty care can be challenging. When Medicaid agrees to pay for effective treatment programs, patients in need benefit.”

Researchers from Durham University's Hearing the Voice project are attending the Edinburgh International Book Festival through August as part of a study, asking both...

As we approach world hearing voices day 2013 Karen and I are in Canada. We have just enjoyed running a preconference workshop for about 100 people in Winnipeg. I am sitting in my room before breakfast writing this piece and as I sit I am thinking back twenty-three years ago; I am in a psych unit in Manchester and I have a new support worker called Lindsay. By then I had been a psych patient for almost ten years and was fast approaching spending the rest of my life in the system. My support worker had convinced me to go to a new group that was starting in Manchester called a hearing voices group.

From the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care: Yana Jacobs, LMFT reflects on her experiences providing art therapy at a Soteria House and "being...

Hearing Voices Network self-help groups are an important resource for coping with voice hearing, study finds.

From Psychology Today: Research and case studies show that the ketogenic diet may be a promising treatment for psychosis and other mental health challenges. The ketogenic...

"A retired nurse, a Harvard-educated musician and others sued British Columbia this week, claiming it forcibly subjects mental health patients to electroconvulsive therapy and...

As I considered the voice I heard talking to me in my own head, it occurred to me that what was happening was, more or less, a later development of the brain talking to a more basic and earlier level of consciousness, one which was not verbal itself and was, in fact, the actual seat and locus of my real awareness.

Article Abstract: Although research supports the stigma and labeling perspective, empirical evidence also indicates that a social safety net remains intact for those with mental...

“The voices, they tell me they gonna kill me, and it’s my fault.” “Sometimes, when we hear voices, they just reflect our own anxieties, sometimes they can echo things we’ve been told in the past. When the voices tell you that they’re going to kill you, does that echo anything you may have been told in the past?” I ask.

My memoir, Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head, chronicles my journey through depression, psychosis, and an unmedicated recovery, and describes how I learned to challenge my demons and negotiate the conditions that allowed me to regain control over my mind and my life. Although I thought my story was very unusual, I thought it possible that many who have manifested the symptoms associated with schizophrenia could achieve a greater degree of recovery than is currently the norm. When I became involved with the Hearing Voices Network, I learned that my experience is not uncommon and that there are literally millions of people in the world who are living full lives, even while hearing voices.

For aeon, Roberta Payne, a professor of literature and the author of Speaking to My Madness: How I Searched for Myself in Schizophrenia, writes...

A California jury ruled that Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceutical and a psychiatrist were responsible for the death of 25-year-old Leo Liu. During a clinical trial for Risperdal, Liu died of a heart injury that was “further complicated” by the drug and ignored by the study doctors. Janssen was found 70% responsible for Liu’s death and ordered to pay $5.6 million to the family.

A study of 40 patients with schizophrenia diagnoses and 40 patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID) found that "neither phenomenological definitions of dissociation nor...