How Can We Talk About Difficult Experiences Non-Violently?

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I really valued the massive Melbourne Hearing Voices conference last week. The theme of reconciliation between voice hearers and mental health workers was a powerful one. This emphasis on creating understanding conversations at the conference was encouraged with dialogues between people on specific subjects - medication, spirituality, psychological approaches to voices etc. - rather than keynotes. It seemed a move away from presentations of competing knowledges, toward a more dialogical conference; a respectful exchange of different viewpoints, feelings and values. When you have a range of views in a presentation it’s less easy to adopt a “good guys vs. bad guys” mentality; you start to see the complexities in more relief. The surprise for me was that I liked it.

I Wonder if There is Some Axis II Going on Here? Further Thoughts on...

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This blog was prompted by an invitation to do a guest post on the site of one of my favorite bloggers, 1 Boring Old Man. This is my response to the notion that there are certain conditions - Schizophrenia among them - that correspond more directly to biomedical conditions

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Psychosis: A Valuable Contribution Despite Major Flaws

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The core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is the idea of simply accepting, rather than trying to get rid of, disturbing or unwanted inner experiences like anxiety or voices, and then refocusing on a commitment to take action toward personally chosen values regardless of whether that seems to make the unwanted experiences increase or decrease. This idea is consistent with the emphasis in the recovery movement of finding a way to live a valued life despite any ongoing problems, but ACT has value because of the unique and effective strategies it offers to help people make this shift.

Voices, Then & Now

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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.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The DSM-5

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What does the new DSM-5 have in common with an Alfred Hitchcock mystery?  They both use a plot device, a “MacGuffin,” to drive the story. Hitchcock explained a MacGuffin as on the one hand “ridiculous”, “non-existent”, “empty” and inherently without meaning, and at the same time the central point around which the entire story turns.  Which narratives, and whose, are served by the "diagnosis MacGuffin”? Are there more socially desirable alternatives to replace this particular plot vehicle? 

Creating Dialog on Approaches for “Psychosis” in New Jersey

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What would happen if professionals opened their minds about the nature of madness?  What new possibilities might be created if they questioned labels such...

Guiding Voices, Trauma-Induced Voices

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I have facilitated support groups and worked one-on-one with those who hear voices for nearly 10 years.. The insights I've come to from my own experience have often facilitated understanding for others. Here is what I have learned from my experience of hearing voices.

Changing Minds About Voices: Action Over Words

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Sometimes the best way to make real change is just to do the work. Sometimes the talk is the work and it can be hard to separate out the two. However, in a growing number of instances, it’s hard to miss the futility of the talking and how tied up we can get in our own virtual war of words. Stepping away can be liberating. Sometimes, while everyone else is wrapped up in the talking, you can get an awful lot done.

Understanding Madness as Revolution, Then Working Toward Peace

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While some will frame Eleanor Longden’s story, told in her awesome TED video (which has now been viewed about 1/2 million times!), as the triumph of an individual struggling against “mental illness,” I believe the story might better be seen as a refutation of the whole “illness of the mind” metaphor, and as an indication of a desperate need for a new paradigm.

Challenges and Visions for the “Mental Heatlh” System

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I envision a world where there is no need for a mental health field/system because communities are strong and we have a holistic understanding...

On “Schizophrenia”

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The first time I heard someone labeled schizophrenic I was about 10 years old. A man was talking to himself and appeared to be house-less and perhaps on drugs. My mom, a very good teacher and explainer of things to me, said, “That man is schizophrenic. That means he can't tell the difference between what's inside of himself and what's outside.” In retrospect this seems like a relatively sophisticated and sensitive explanation; Falling in love, hearing music that enters our heart, having children/giving birth, connecting powerfully with another person in a meeting of the minds, feeling empathy, deeply caring about something, experiencing oneness with nature, are all examples of times when the line between inner and outer reality is blurred.

Avatar Therapy: A New Battle for the Tree of Life

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In the film Avatar, scientists are keen to exploit the moon planet Pandora which is inhabited by 10-foot-tall blue humanoids called Na'vi.  To do so they create Na'vi human hybrids called “Avatars” which are controlled from afar by genetically matched humans. When the scientists decide to destroy the eco-system of the planet to gain access to valuable minerals, war breaks out between the humans and the Na'vi. At this point the main character, Jake, who operates an Avatar, has to choose whose side he is on.  Eventually Jake's life is saved and transformed by the Tree of Souls, which the humans are trying to destroy. Why are Avatars in the news again? The latest innovation from psychiatric research is using computer-generated avatars to help people who hear aggressive voices.

Colonization or Postpsychiatry?

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.

Truth is Like a Lion: The 25th Hearing Voices Conference

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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.

The Hearing Voices Movement: Has it Really Been 25 years?

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In November 2012, Cardiff, Wales, more than two hundred and fifty people who hear voices, see visions and have other unusual and extreme experiences (referred to as “hearing voices” in the rest of this post), family members, friends, activists and allied experts by profession came together from around the world. The purpose of the three-day meeting was to celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary of the formation of hearing voices movement, to consider the lessons learnt so far and to envisage what we should be doing over the next 25 years. The excellent film, "Voices Matter", that you can now view on this site is a record of the event and I strongly recommend that you take a look.

Adderall Blamed for Leap into Tiger’s Den

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The mother of a man charged with trespassing for leaping from a monorail into a tiger's den at the Bronx Zoo, where he was...

Confronting the Addiction Voice on the Road to Recovery

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Part 1 of this series examined how the disease model of addiction intersects with the genetically based “mental illness” theory and practice of Biological Psychiatry. Part 2 analyzed the serious limitations and sometimes harmful effects of the domination of addiction treatment by the Twelve Step (disease model), and how Biological Psychiatry has both seized upon and expanded the culture of addiction in this country. What follows will be a presentation of some alternative methods for overcoming addiction problems.

The Hearing Voices Movement: In Response to a Father – ‘My Daughter, the Schizophrenic’

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There was a heart-breaking and disturbing story in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper entitled, My Daughter, the Schizophrenic’, which featured edited extracts from a book written by the father of a child called Jani. He describes how Jani is admitted into a psychiatric hospital when she is 5, diagnosed with schizophrenia when she is 6 and by the time she is 7, she has been put on a potent cocktail of psychotropic medications.

The Problem with PTSD

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“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.

More Thinking about Alternatives to Psychiatric Diagnosis

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In my last post, I argued that the single most damaging effect of psychiatric diagnosis is loss of meaning. By ruthlessly divesting experiences of their personal, social and cultural significance, diagnosis turns ‘people with problems’ into ‘patients with illnesses.’ Horrifying stories of trauma, abuse, discrimination and deprivation are sealed off behind a pseudo-medical label as the individual is launched on what is often a lifelong journey of disability, exclusion and despair.

The Hearing Voices Movement: Beyond Critiquing the Status Quo

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We have just celebrated the anniversary of the rapidly expanding global Hearing Voices Movement which was founded more than twenty-five years ago following the ground-breaking research of Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher. Romme and Escher have advocated for a radical shift in the way we understand the phenomenon of Hearing Voices; in contrast to traditional, biomedical psychiatry which views voices as an aberrant by-product of genetic, brain and cognitive faults, their research has firmly established that voices make sense when taking into account the traumatic circumstances that frequently provoke them.

Madness Radio: Eleanor Longden on Voices and Trauma

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Hearing distressing voices is highly correlated with traumatic experiences, and many people report that their first experience with distressing voices occurs after a trauma....

Similarity of Dissociation and Voice-Hearing in DID and Schizophrenia

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

Dissociative Experiences Mediate Childhood Trauma/Auditory Hallucinations

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Researchers in Spain assessed 71 patients diagnosed with psychoses for dissociative experiences, trauma, delusions and hallucinations. Childhood trauma was positively associated with dissociation (r =...