Hearing Voices

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.

The Hearing Voices movement is a beautiful thing, and last year it was 25 years old. What has happened in 25 years? A confidence has grown in a different approach to hearing voices, listening and embracing rather than trying to control and silence voices. Key to this has been Hearing Voices groups and conferences, where people who hear voices are listened to with openness and curiosity. It’s not about telling people who hear voices to throw away their pills if they are taking them, its about creating spaces to listen deeply to what is happening.

In this episode of ABC Radio National's All In The Mind, Lynne Malcolm interviews three experts about the impact of trauma on our memory and mental health. One guest,...

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.

Shanika Ranasinghe speaks to ELLE about her experience of hearing voices, the stigma attached to voice-hearing and the tools that have helped her cope, such...

In this interview for Hidden Persuaders, Camille Robcis discusses institutional psychotherapy, a French psychiatric reform movement that began during the Second World War. Robcis explains...

Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of 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...

An upcoming episode of BBC's Horizon will follow three people who live with voices, paranoia, and hallucinations and explore various psychological, biological, social, and environmental...

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that schizophrenia patients in an experimental treatment program (RAISE) who experienced better outcomes had been on lower doses of antipsychotics than normal. However, the article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Tuesday did not divulge any data on the varying antipsychotic drug doses in the different study groups.

Despite the fact that clinical practice guidelines specifically recommend against the use of more than one antipsychotic at once, new research reveals that as...

Yet again I find myself in the painful, ridiculous and uncomfortable position of having to try to do my best to repair the extensive damage which is being done to vulnerable survivors of child abuse by the system. Yet again I am powerless to do much about it.

In recent months, two teams of researchers in the UK and the US published complementary findings about the epigenetic origins of schizophrenia that have scientific communities who indulge in ‘genetic conspiracy theories’ abuzz. While these results are intriguing, and no doubt involve pathbreaking research methodologies, this line of thought represents a decontextualized understanding both of the symptoms that are typically associated with schizophrenia, and their causes.

From Healio: A recent review indicated that virtual reality-based treatment may be effective for a variety of mental health concerns including phobias, social anxiety, PTSD,...

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.

In this piece for Vice, Laetitia Laubscher discusses the Hearing Voices Network, a non-medical approach to hearing voices and experiencing extreme states. "...a key goal...

Study examines the effects on participants of being told they are at risk of developing psychosis.

As we develop critical awareness about the mental health “treatments” that don’t work and that often make things much worse, the question inevitably comes up, what can those who want to be helpful be doing instead?

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

In this month’s Schizophrenia Bulletin, a person diagnosed with autism, OCD, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and major depressive disorder provides a first-hand close reading and description of their own psychiatric experiences.

In this month’s issue of Psychological Medicine, researchers from King’s College London found evidence for associations between different types of childhood adversity and specific symptoms associated with psychosis. As current categorical approaches to psychosis and schizophrenia diagnoses come under increasing scrutiny, this study adds support to sociological and psychological theories and treatments.

-Rhianna Goozee discusses the development of the Hearing Voices Movement and how research has blurred the lines between "healthy" and "normal" minds.

The Atlantic reports on Tanya Luhrmann's recent research, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry "That suggests that the way people pay attention to...

In this piece for Youth Ki Awaaz, Nibu Augustine recounts his traumatic experiences with psychiatry and the mental health system, including forced drugging and adverse...

From Sapiens: Researchers are increasingly recognizing the role that social and environmental factors, including childhood abuse, stressful events, and poverty, play in the development of...