Hearing Voices

Military psychiatrists and judges are beginning to see the effects of an eightfold increase of SSRI use in the military since 2005, according to...

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,...

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

In Schizophrenia Bulletin, an Australian and a French researcher argue that the Hearing Voices Movement and similar groups are often misleading the public and...

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

Dutch psychiatrist and epidemiologist, Jim van Os, has renewed his call to drop schizophrenia as a disease classification. “Several recent papers by different authors...

Researchers in Australia, the U.K., the Netherlands, Canada and Belgium reviewed research on auditory hallucinations (AH) in schizophrenia as well other clinical and nonclinical...

Mae Harden is interviewed by Philly.com about her years of attempting to medicate away the voices she was hearing in her head, while hiding...

Many people "hear voices" of different kinds while reading -- what does this mean for research into auditory-verbal hallucinations?

Researchers in the U.K. (lead by Richard Bentall) found that specific childhood adversities were significantly associated with specific forms of psychosis in adulthood in...

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

The results of epidemiological studies of the prevalence of hallucinations strongly imply that psychosis exists on a spectrum, according to the Scientific American. This suggests “that the standard treatment for a psychotic episode might be due for an overhaul.”

Writing on his 1 Boring Old Man blog, Dr. Mickey Nardo reflects on the media frenzy around the RAISE study and asks why the prescription data has not been released. He adds skepticism about the political motives of the potentially overblown results, which he sees as a clear push for increased mental health funding.

Benedict Carey at the New York Times covers the push for new programs that emphasize supportive services, therapy, school and work assistance, and family education, rather than simply drug treatment.

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.

-"What links polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, sleep paralysis, and hearing voices?" asks The Guardian.

John Read and Richard Bentall write in the British Journal of Psychiatry about the growing understanding and acceptance of the significant role adverse childhood...

In the The Atlantic, journalist Ric Morin explores alternative perspectives on and approaches to schizophrenic and psychotic experiences through a lengthy interview with psychiatrist...

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

Investigating the prevalence and types of hallucination-like experiences (HLEs) in a sample of 437 young adults, researchers in Italy, Belgium, the U.K. and Denmark found...

Schizophrenia Bulletin offers this first-person account of "Compassion Focused Therapy" for talking with voices. Article →

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...

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.”

-BPS Research Digest reports on growing efforts to understand the voices that virtually everyone hears in their heads.

-The Edinburgh International Book Festival hosted a discussion exploring religious beliefs, creative inspiration, and whether hearing "the voice of God" should be regarded as a symptom of mental illness.