Intervoice: - Home

Canada

2010-02-15T07:15:00Z

Updated 14/02/2010

Things are starting to get underway for the development of a Canadian HVN! Maria Haarmans from Toronto, Ontario. Maria is the INTERVOICE representative in Canada and is bringing together organisations and individuals o stimulate development of hearing voices work across Canada.

You can contact Maria here

Quebec: La Pavois is mental health organisation based in Quebec, they work with the Francophonic community and have been developing work on hearing voices since 2007, including providing training and supporting groups, producing DVD's and conducting research and evaluation projects.. They have translated "Working with Voices", and are also translating ‘Accepting your Voices’.

They have also produced a French language introduction to their work, which you can read below:

Mieux vivre avec les voix:
Groupe de formation et de soutien

Ces groupes de formation et de soutien pour les entendeurs de voix ont été créés par Le Pavois en 2007, en collaboration avec PECH, l’Université Laval et un ex-entendeur de voix afin de répondre à certains besoins non comblés par le réseau de la santé mentale.

Nous constatons, en effet, que la personne qui entend des voix :

seule et isolée avec son vécu;

ses voix;

son expérience;

ses voix comme des symptômes de la maladie;

un sentiment d’incompréhension et d’impuissance face au phénomène des voix;

Demeure sans appui et sans aide.

LES OBJECTIFS:

la suite de l’identification de ces besoins non comblés, nous avons élaboré les objectifs de notre programme. Il s’agit de permettre aux personnes de…

réunir pour échanger librement sur leurs voix ou sur d’autres perceptions sensorielles (visions, tactiles, olfactives, gustatives);

Découvrir d’autres explications au phénomène des voix que celles liées aux symptômes psychiatriques;

S’informer sur les recherches et les expériences portant sur les entendeurs de voix d’autres pays;

Connaître et explorer différentes techniques et approches pour mieux connaître leurs voix, leurs donner un sens, pour les diminuer, pour les maîtriser ou pour mieux composer avec celles-ci;

donner de l’appui, s’entraider et s’enrichir mutuellement;

Développer et valider une structure de pensée personnelle au regard de leurs perceptions permettant une plus grande aisance à composer avec leurs voix ou leurs autres perceptions sensorielles;

S’approprier du pouvoir sur leur vie en prenant, entre autres, un plus grand contrôle sur leurs voix, et ce, à leur propre façon.

LE CONTENU:

Afin de bien répondre à ces objectifs, nous avons développé un programme inspiré des travaux de Rome et Esher (1993), Baker (2000), Coleman & Smith (1997), Deegan (1993) et Downs (2001) incluant les aspects suivants :

des données sur la prévalence du phénomène;

des informations d’ordre général et des résultats de recherche portant sur le phénomène des voix;

l’exploration de leurs voix et de périodes silencieuses par l’intermédiaire de différents exercices;

un répertoire de stratégies pour mieux composer avec leurs voix, les diminuer ou les éliminer;

la présentation de témoignages écrits et verbaux de personnes avec ou sans diagnostic psychiatrique qui composent bien avec leur voix;

l’approche liée au sens de l’expérience et à la signification des voix;

les différentes étapes d’adaptation au phénomène des voix;

les principes facilitant le travail avec les voix;

un DVD intitulé « Vivre avec les voix » ainsi qu’une formation intitulée « Mieux vivre avec les voix » réalisée par Le Pavois. Notons qu’afin de sensibiliser les personnes en rétablissement, les intervenants, les décideurs et les proches au vécu des personnes expérimentant le phénomène des voix, nous avons réalisé un DVD d’une quinzaine de minutes par lequel nous avons l’opportunité de découvrir 8 personnes qui ont participé à l’un ou l’autre des groupes d’entendeurs de voix et qui témoignent de leur vécu, ainsi qu’une formation de sensibilisation.

RECHERCHES:

Deux recherches ont été réalisées auprès de groupes d’entendeurs de voix en collaboration avec PECH et l’Université Laval : « Les entendeurs de voix : Évaluation d’un groupe de formation et de soutien » et « Les entendeurs de voix : Évaluation d’un groupe de formation et de soutien, Volet 2 ». Vous pouvez consulter les rapports de recherche sur ce site web : www.lepavois.org/recherches.htm

INSCRIPTION, INFORMATION, FORMATION :

Personne responsable du service : Brigitte Soucy, B. Psyc-Éd., agente de développement.

COORDONNÉES:

email: b.soucy@lepavois.org
website:La Pavois

3005, 4e avenue
Québec (Québec)
G1J 3G6

Téléphone : 418-627-9779
Télécopieur : 418-627-2157

Téléchargement brochure

The First World Hearing Voices Congress Maastricht, 17th - 18th September 2009

2010-02-08T20:17:00Z

Updated 06/02/2010

INTERVOICE, the international organisation for the advocacy of Hearing voices held a highly successful congress on the 17th and 18th September, 2009 in the MECC in Maastricht. You can read accounts by people who attended here and the results of the formal evaluation here

At this congress over 90 voice hearers, researchers and therapists presented key note speeeches, ran master classes and themed presentations focusing on important aspects of the recovery process. The Congress also included discussion around difficult issues such as the disease concept of schizophrenia and the use of medication. The themes and stories heard at the Congress went beyond theory and engaged participants in the everyday lives of voice hearers and the possibility of recovery.

Over 350 psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, managers, people hearing voices, families and policymakers from 20 countries were present at the largest event of its kind in the world.

You can view and download the presentations and other material presented to the meeting here

You can download a hard copy of the full programme here

You can read the Abstract booklet which includes details of the presentations and presenters biographies, available online here for presenters A -L and here for presenters M -V
A hard copy of the abstract book was issued at the congress.

INTERVOICE meeting, 14th - 16th September 2009

</center> The INTERVOICE premeeting was attended by over 120 voice hearers and INTERVOICE members from Monday 14 till Wednesday to the 16 September 2009 in Valkenburg (near Maastricht), Netherlands.
You can view and download the presentations and other material presented to the meeting here

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Beyond consultation: the challenge of working with user/survivor and carer groups

2010-02-08T07:08:00Z

Updated 06/02/2010

Psychiatrists, Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas, both long time supporters of INTERVOICE reference the work of the hearing voices movement in an article in the Psychiatric Bulletin (July 2009). They argue the challenge of groups like our own need to be responded to positively by psychiatry.

Summary: "Recent years have seen increased pressures on psychiatrists to work closely with user/survivor and carer groups.We argue that although many groups are happy for this to remain at the level of consultation, there are growing demands from more radical elements of the user/survivor movement for moves towards a more collaborative framework. A number of these groups challenge some of the central assumptions of psychiatry. For productive engagement and collaboration to take place, psychiatry will have to be able to react positively, not defensively, to these challenges. We suggest that this raises questions about how we should think about the nature of science, truth and expertise."Psychiatric Bulletin (2009), 33, 241^243. doi: 10.1192/pb.bp.108.021428

You can read the article here
reader response here
and their reply here here

Renaming schizophrenia - a good or bad idea?

2010-02-07T21:01:00Z

Updated 06/02/2010

These two articles consider the benefits or otherwise of renaming schizophrenia. Wakio Sato reports on the recent changes that have been made in Japan and Shahin Malo on the debate taking place in the Netherlands

"The Japanese Solution" by Wakio Sato
The new term schizophrenia adopted by Japanese psychiatry after pressure from relatives groups (“Togo Shitcho Sho”) refers to the vulnerability – stress model, and implies that the disorder may be treatable and recovery is possible if a combination of advanced pharmacotherapy with appropriate psychosocial intervention is used. But still the reality is that it seems to be ordinary that hight dosage and many different kinds of medication are given with less time for interview and/or counseling in many hospitals and clinics.

Dysfunctional Perception Syndrome’ The new name for schizophrenia - or is Salience Syndrome better? by Shahin Mol
Anoiksis is a Dutch society of service users who have, or have had, experience of psychosis or schizophrenia. Last year they held a nationwide competition to come up with a new name for schizophrenia. It must be acceptable, understandable, honest, and it must cover the ground. The new name, dysfunctional perception syndrome, in short DPS, satisfied these criteria best, according to the expert jury. Reaction has been mixed. Meanwhile, psychiatrist Jim van Os has come up with an alternative, he has come up with "Salience Syndrome. This is how Jim van Os explains it: “The human mind has the ability to turn its attention to something that is salient, something that jumps out at you. We then focus on it. In some people this function is disturbed, and everything gets an enormous significance. They think, for example, that a television programme is about them, or that people who are just walking along the street are out to harm them. Research shows that this can happen to everybody under the influence of drugs, also to healthy people. The word syndrome indicates that it is about a cluster of symptoms. And not about a clearly defined illness.

You can read "The Japanese Solution" by Wakio Sato here
and ‘Dysfunctional Perception Syndrome’ The new name for schizophrenia? by Shahin Mol here

Interviews with voice hearers in Cambodia

2010-02-07T19:39:00Z

Updated 06/02/2010

In 2005 Jane Taylor interviewed voice hearers in a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia using the Maastricht Interview Schedule

Jane, with the assistance of Mervyn Morris and the Maastricht Interview schedule, conducted interviews at the psychiatric hospital in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia, (where the mental health professionals are trained in your approach and run weekly hearing voices groups.)

Jane also conducted interviews with traditional healers in Cambodia, who use hearing voices as a positive tool of their trade. She wrote up my research findings as part of her MA dissertation for an MA in Existential Psychotherapy.

In the papers the research results and the actual interviews that I conducted at the psychiatric hospital in Cambodia are available for study.

You can read the completed interviews and Jane's observations here
and see photographs and background information here

The Worldwide INTERVOICE Network: Information on national initiatives

2009-11-04T13:28:00Z

Updated 14/02/2010

<center>Worldwide INTERVOICE National Networks

</center>

Click on country name for information about national initiatives or go directly to their website:

<center> Australia

Visit their website here</center>

<center> Austria

Visit their website here</center>

<center> Canada

<center>Denmark

Visit their website here </center>

<center>England

Visit their website here </center>

<center>Finland

Visit their website here </center>

<center>Germany

Visit their website here </center>

<center> Ireland

Visit their website here</center>

<center>Italy

Visit their website here </center>

<center>Japan

</center>

<center>Netherlands

Visit their website here </center>

<center>New Zealand

Visit their website here </center>

<center>Norway

Visit their website here </center>

<center>Palestine

</center>

<center>Scotland

Visit their website here</center>

<center>Spain

</center>

<center>Sweden

</center>

<center>Switzerland

</center>

<center>Wales

Visit their website here </center>

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Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey in response to the programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”, short version for mental health professionals with references

2009-10-20T08:27:00Z

Updated 22/10/2009

20th October 2009

Open letter to Oprah Winfrey in response to the programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”, version for mental health professionals with references

This is a new version of the open letter (19th October 2009) addressed to Oprah Winfrey and is intended for mental health professionals, academics, policy makers and other people interested in the issues raised by the programme about Jani, “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”.

It has been written in response to the Oprah Winfrey programme about Jani "The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic” broadcast on the 6th October 2009. We want to tell you about an alternative and more empowering approach to the experience of hearing voices.

If you have not seen the programme and associated article, see link to the programme here

125 members of the mental health community around the world, including voice hearers, relatives, citizens, academics and educators, therapists, nurses and researchers have been moved to sign this letter since it was proposed on the 15th October 2009. Such is the level of concern we feel about the circumstances that Jani finds herself in.

Signatories include 30 people who hear voices, 37 academics (with 9 Professors, 21 Phds), 10 family members, 10 psychiatrists, 17 psychologists/therapists, 9 nurses, 23 community based workers and trainers.

It has been reedited by Richard Bentall, Chair of Clinical Psychology, University of Bangor, Wales, to conform with academic standards and has been restructured with this in mind, it includes some new information and is referenced. We have done this to ensure members of the professional mental health community can be sure that the information contained is evidence based and has been subject to scientific research.

This is where you come in, please circulate this letter as widely as you can. It would be helpful if you copied me into any email you send, so I can keep track of where it is being posted. Also if the letter is published anywhere online or elsewhere, please let me know.

If you want to add your support, send me your name, title and some details about who you are and where you live. The more people who sign up the better. You can do this by adding your comments and details to the comment box at the bottom of the page or email contact Paul Baker at<font color='#C10435'> admin@intervoiceonline.org</font>..

You can download a copy of the open letter for mental health professionals, policy makers and researchers here

Dear Oprah

We are writing in response to your programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”, which concerned Jani, a child who hears voices, which was broadcast on the 6th October 2009. We hope to correct the pessimistic picture offered by the mental health professionals featured in your programme, and in the accompanying article on your website. What upset us most and moved us to write to you, is that parents will have been left with the impression that they are powerless to help their children if they hear voices. We are also concerned that the programme gave the impression that children with voices must be treated with medication. We note that the medications mentioned in your programme all have very serious side effects. (For example, antipsychotics such as Haldol cause neuronal loss, block the dopamine pathways in the brain required to processes rewarding stimuli, and carry a high risk of neurological and metabolic side effects such as Parkinsonianism and diabetes. Their effects on the developing brain are largely unknown and, in our view, they should only be given to children as a treatment as absolutely last resort.)

We have been researching and working with adults and children like Jani for the last twenty years, and our work has led us to very different conclusions from those reached by the mental health professionals on your programme. One of our founding members, Dr. Sandra Escher from the Netherlands, has spent the last fifteen years talking to children who hear voices, and to their parents and carers. This work is the most detailed and thorough investigation of children who hear voices carried out to date [1, 2]. The most important findings from recent research on hearing voices are as follows:

Prevalence of voice hearing in adults and children
Recent large-scale population (epidemiological) studies have shown that about 4-10 % of the adult population hear voices at some time in their lives [3-5]. Only about a third seek assistance from mental health services. Amongst children, the proportion hearing voices may be even higher [6] and, again, only a minority are referred for treatment. Hence, it is wrong to assume that voice hearing is always a pathological condition requiring treatment.

Psychological mechanisms
Everyone has an inner voice. Psychologists call this phenomenon ‘inner speech’ and it is an important mechanism that we use to regulate our own behaviour (plan what we want to do, direct our own actions). Child psychologists have long understood that this ability begins to develop at about 2-years of age [7, 8]. Hearing voices seems to reflect some kind of differentiation in the mind’s ability to tell the difference between inner speech and the heard speech of other people [9, 10].

Link to trauma
A common theme in research with both adults and children is the relationship between hearing voices and traumatic experiences. In adults, around 75% begin to hear voices in relationship to a trauma or situations that make them feel powerless [11-13], for example the death of a loved one, divorce, losing a job, failing an exam, or longer lasting traumas such as physical, emotional or sexual abuse. The role of trauma was identified in 85% of the children we have studied, for example being bullied by peers or teachers, or being unable to perform to the required level at school, or being admitted to a hospital because of a physical illness. In short, our research has shown that hearing voices is usually a reaction to a situation or a problem that the child is struggling to cope with.

Voices have a meaning A related and equally striking finding is that the voices often refer to the problem that troubles the child, but in an elliptical manner. To take just one example from the children studied by Sandra Escher:

The voices told an 8-year-old boy to blind himself. This frightened his mother. But when we discussed whether there was something in the life of the boy he could not face, she understood the voices’ message. The boy could not cope with his parents’ problematic marriage. He did not want to see it.

We wonder whether anyone has attempted to establish why, in Jani’s case, the rat is called "Wednesday", why the girl is called "24 Hours", and why is the cat called "400"? What do these mean for her? Why does Jani want people to call her "Blue-Eyed Tree Frog" and "Jani Firefly"?

Good outcomes without treatment
Recently, Sandra Escher conducted a three-year follow up study of eighty children who heard voices, aged between 8 and 19 [1]. Half received mental health care but the other half were not given any specialist care at all. The children were interviewed four times, at yearly intervals. By the end of the research period 60% of the children reported that their voices had disappeared. Very often, this was because the triggering problems were dealt with or because the child’s situation changed - for example, following a change of schools.

Helping children who hear voices: Advise to parents
It is important to appreciate that the desire to make voices disappear, although usually the goal of the mental health care services, is not necessarily in the best interests of children. Some children do not want to lose their voices. If children can find within themselves the resources to cope with their voices, they can begin to lead happier and more balanced lives.

The most important element in this process is support from the family. Unfortunately, we have found that mental health services often fail to have a positive effect on children’s voices, because they foster fear rather than coping. However, we have found that referral to a psychotherapist who is prepared to discuss the meaning of voices is often helpful.

It is important that parents do not assume that hearing voices is a terrible disaster but instead regard it as a signal that something is troubling their child. If parents assume that voices are a symptom of an illness, and are afraid of them, the child will naturally pick up on this feeling. This can lead to a self-defeating cycle in which the child becomes fearful and obsessed by the voices.

We would like to offer this 10-point guide for parents, indicating what they can do if a child tells them that he or she hears voices:

1. Try not to over react. Although it is understandable that you will be worried, work hard not to communicate your anxiety to your child.

2. Accept the reality of the voice experience for your child; ask about the voices, how long the child has been hearing them, who or what they are, whether they have names, what they say, etc.

3. Let your child know that many other children hear voices and that usually they go away after a while.

4. Even if the voices do not disappear your child may learn to live in harmony with them.

5. It is important to break down your child's sense of isolation and difference from other children. Your child is special - unusual perhaps, but really not abnormal.

6. Find out if your child has any difficulties or problems that he or she finds very hard to cope with, and work on fixing those problems. Think back to when the voices first started. What was happening to your child at the time? Was there anything unusual or stressful occurring?

7. If you think you need outside help, find a therapist who is prepared to accept your child's experiences and work systematically with him or her to understand and cope better with the voices.

8. Be ready to listen to your child if he or she wants to talk about the voices. Use drawing, painting, acting and other creative ways to help the child to describe what is happening in his or her life.

9. Get on with your lives and try not to let the experience of hearing voices become the centre of your child's life or your own.

10. Most children who live well with their voices have supportive families who accept the experience as part of who their child is. You can do this too!

Conclusion
In conclusion we would like to stress that, in our view, labelling a seven-year-old child as schizophrenic and subjecting her to powerful psychotropic medication and periodic hospitalisation is unlikely to help resolve her problems. Indeed, the opposite is most probable: children treated in this way will simply become more powerless. Because your well respected, award winning show reaches out to so many people, we are concerned that there will be many viewers who will be left with the impression that the treatment Jani receives is the only method available. We fear that this may cause some children to be subjected to an unnecessary lifetime in psychiatric care. It is very important to recognise that hearing voices, in itself, is not a sign of psychopathology.

We hope you will give consideration to the possibility of making a future programme showing the other side of the story, one of hope, optimism and with a focus on recovery. Perhaps you could make a programme about a child with similar voice experiences to Jani, who has been helped to come to terms with her or his experiences and to discuss with the child, parents and therapists how this was acheived? If there is anyway we could help make this happen, please contact us.

We look forward to hearing from you on the issues raised in our letter.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Baker
INTERVOICE coordinator
(Letter reedited with the kind assistance of Professor Richard Bentall)

Selected bibliography
1.         Escher, S., et al., Independent course of childhood auditory hallucinations: A sequential 3-year follow-up study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 2002. 181 Suppl 43: p. 10-18.
2.         Escher, S., et al., Formation of delusional ideation in adolescents hearing voices: A prospective study. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), in press.
3.         Tien, A.Y., Distribution of hallucinations in the population. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 1991. 26: p. 287-292.
4.         van Os, J., et al., Strauss (1969) revisited: A psychosis continuum in the normal population? Schizophrenia Research, 2000. 45: p. 11-20.
5.         van Os, J., et al., Prevalence of psychotic disorder and community level of psychotic symptoms: An urban-rural comparison. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2001. 58: p. 663-668.
6.         Poulton, R., et al., Children's self-reported psychotic symptoms and adult schizophreniform disorder: A 15-year longitudinal study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2000. 57: p. 1053-1058.
7.         Berk, L.E., Why children talk to themselves. Scientific American, 1994: p. 61-65.
8.         Vygotsky, L.S.V., Thought and language. 1962, Cambidge, Mass: MIT Press.
9.         Alleman, A. and F. Laroi, Hallucinations: The science of idiosyncratic perceptions. 2008, Washington: American Psychological Association.
10.       Bentall, R.P., Madness explained: Psychosis and human nature. 2003, London: Penguin.
11. Read, J., et al., Sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adulthood as predictors of hallucinations, delusions and thought disorder. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 2003. 76: p. 1-22.
12. Hammersley, P., et al., Childhood trauma and hallucinations in bipolar affective disorder: A preliminary investigation. British Journal of Psychiatry, 2003. 182: p. 543-547.
13. Shevlin, M., M. Dorahy, and G. Adamson, Childhood traumas and hallucinations: An analysis of the National Comorbidity Survey. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2007. 41: p. 222-228.

Signed by 155 people from 20 countries, listed in order of the time they were received.

Dr. Sandra Escher, - Board member of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
Professor Marius Romme, psychiatrist, MD, PhD, President of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
Dirk Corstens, Social psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Chair of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
Paul Baker, coordinator of INTERVOICE, Spain
Jacqui Dillon, consultant trainer and voice hearer, chair of Hearing Voices Network England, board member of INTERVOICE, UK
Ron Coleman, consultant trainer and voice hearer, board member of INTERVOICE, UK
Hywel Davies, chair of Hearing Voices Network Cymru (Wales), honorary board member of INTERVOICE; UK
Amanda R. E. Aller Lowe, MS, LPC, LCPC, QMRP - Agency Partner, Communities In Schools & Area Representative, The Center for Cultural Interchange, Aurora, Illinois, INTERVOICE supporter, USA
Adrienne Giacon, Secretary and Hearing Voices Network Support group facilitator Hearing Voices Network Aotearoa, INTERVOICE member, New Zealand
Dr John Read, Associate Professor, Psychology Department, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Ann-Louise S. Silver, MD, founder and past president, International Society for the Psychological Treatments of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses (www.isps-us.org), ISPS-US, USA
Matthew Morrissey, MA, MFT, Board Member, MindFreedom International, Northern California Coordiator, ISPS-US, San Franciso, USA
Irene van de Giessen, former voice hearer and foster-daughter of Willem van Staalen and Willem van Staalen, voice integrating foster-father of Irene, The Netherlands
Olga Runciman, consultant trainer and voice hearer (BSc psychiatric nurse and graduate student in psychology), INTERVOICE member, Denmark
Professor Wilma Boevink, Chair of Stichting Weerklank (Netherlands Hearing Voices Network), Professor of Recovery, Hanze University; Trimbos-Institute (the Dutch Institute of Mental Health and Addiction), Netherlands
Marian B. Goldstein, voicehearer, (fully recovered thanks to trauma-focussed therapy, the opportunity to make sense of the voices) INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark
Professor Dr J. van Os, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, INTERVOICE supporter, Netherlands
Virginia Pulker, Mental health Occupational Therapist with young people with psychosis, recovery promoter, HVN Australia, Northern Ireland and England. INTERVOICE supporter, UK/Australia
Professor Richard Bentall, PhD, Chair Clinical Psychology, University of Bangor, INTERVOICE supporter, Wales, UK
Alessandra Santoni, professional working in a Mental Health Service of Milan, voice hearer and facilitator of a hearing voices group, INTERVOICE supporter,Italy
Geraldo Peixoto and Dulce Edie Pedro dos Santos, São Vicente - Est. São Paulo - INTERVOICE supporter, Brasil
Joanna & Andrzej Skulski, INTERVOICE supporters, Polska
Darby Penney, INTERVOICE supporter and President, The Community Consortium, Inc., Albany, NY, USA
Jacqueline Hayes, researcher at Manchester University about hearing voices in 'non-patients' and therapist, UK
Phil Virden, MA, MA, Executive Editor, Asylum Magazine, UK
Matthew Morris, Mental Health Locality Manager, East Suffolk Outreach Team, Suffolk Mental Health Partnerships NHS Trust, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Ros Thomas, Young Peoples Worker, Gateway Community Heath, Wodonga Victoria, INTERVOICE supporter, Australia
Dr. Rufus May Dclin/ Consultant Clinical Psychologist, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Dr. Simon Jones, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Dr. Louis Tinnin, Psychiatrist, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
Linda Gantt, PhD, Intensive Trauma Therapy, Inc., USA
Burton Norman Seitler, Ph.D., New Jersey Institute for training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescence Psychotherapy Studies
Ron Bassman, PhD., Founding member of International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery (INTAR), Past president of The National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy, USA
Michael O'Loughlin, Adelphi University, NY, USA
Dorothy Scotten, Ph.D., LCSW, USA
Marilyn Charles, Ph.D., The Austen Riggs Center, USA
Bex Shaw, Psychotherapist, London, UK
Ira Steinman, MD, author of “TREATING the 'UNTREATABLE' : Healing in the Realms of Madness”, USA
Mike Lawson, Ex Vice Chair National MIND UK 1988-1992, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D., B.C.S.A., International Center for Humane Psychiatry, USA
Ron Unger LCSW, Therapist, USA
Daniel B Fisher (Boston, MA): Person who recovered from what is called schizophrenia, Executive Director National Empowerment Center; National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/survivor Org., member of Interrelate an international coalition of national consumer/user groups, community psychiatrist, Cambridge, Mass., USA
Mary Madrigal, USA
Paul Hammersley, University of Manchester, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Phil Benjamin, mental health nurse and voices consultant, Australia
Eleanor Longden, Bradford Early Intervention in Psychosis Sevice, England, UK
Karen Taylor RMN, director Working to Recovery, Scotland, UK
Bill George, MA, PGCE, Member of the Anoiksis Think Tank, Netherlands
Dr Andrew Moskowitz, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
John Exell, BA(Hons), Dip Arch, voice-hearer, sculptor, artist, writer, poet, UK.
Tineke Nabben, a voice hearer who has learned to cope with her voices and student, learning to help other children and parents to cope with their voices. Germany
Marcello Macario, psychiatrist, Community Mental Health Centre of Carcare, Italy, INTERVOICE supporter, Italy
Ian Parker, Professor of Psychology, co-director of the Discourse Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University, England, UK
David Harper, PhD, Reader in Clinical Psychology, School of Psychology, University of East London, England, UK
Wakio Sato, representative of the Hearing Voices Network - Japan. President of the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology. The representative of an NPO named "Linden" for community mental health in Konko town, Okayama prefecture, Japan
Suzette van IJssel, Ph.D., spiritual counsel and voice hearer, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Jeannette Woolthuis, psycho-social therapist working with children hearing voices, The Netherlands
Dr. Louise Trygstad, Professor Emerita, University of San Francisco School of Nursing, USA
Erik Olsen, Board member ENUSP European Network of Users (x)-users and Survivors of Psychiatry and Executive Committee in European Dsability Forum (EDF)
Astrid Zoetbrood, recovered from psychosis and voices, the Netherlands
Christine Brown, RMN, Hearing Voices Network Scotland, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Rachel Waddingham,Manager of the London Hearing Voices Project (inc. Voice Collective: Young People's Hearing Voices Project), trainer and voice-hearer, UK
Joel Waddingham, Husband and supporter of someone who hears voices, sees visions and has other unusual experiences, UK
Professor Robin Buccheri, RN, MHNP, DNSc, University of San Francisco, CA, USA
Jørn Eriksen, Board member of INTERVOICE, the Danish Hearing Voices Network and The International Mental Health Collaboration Network, Denmark
Douglas Holmes, voice hearer working in a Mental Health Service in Darlinghurst, Sydney, and facilitator of a hearing voices group, INTERVOICE supporter, Australia
Matthew Winter, Student Mental Health Nurse and INTERVOICE supporter
Anneli Westling, Relative of a voice hearer from Stockholm, Sweden
Lia Govers, recovered voice hearer, Italy
Molly Martyn, MA in Clinical Mental Health, Hearing Voices Network of Denver, USA
Tsuyoshi Matsuo, MD, INTERVOICE supporter, Japan
Janet M. Patterson RN, BSN, USA
Odette Nightsky, Sensitive Services International, Australia
Barbara Belton, M.S., M.S. trauma survivor who has recovered and former behavioral health professional, USA
Luigi Colaianni, PhD sociologist, researcher, Community Mental Health Centre, Milano, Italy
Teresa Keedwell, Voice Hearer Support Group, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Maria Haarmans, MA, Canadian Representative INTERVOICE, Canada
Ami Rohnitz, Voice hearer, Sweden
Sharon Jones, University of York, INTERVOICE Supporter, England, UK
Gail A. Hornstein, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College, USA
Siri Blesvik, INTERVOICE supporter, Norway
Lynn Seaton, mental health nurse, Scottish Hearing Voices Network and INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Rozi Pattison, Clinical Psychologist, CAMHS, Kapiti Health Centre, PARAPARAUMU, New Zealand
Suzanne Engelen, Experience Focussed Counselling Institute (efc) and member of INTERVOICE. She is an expert by experience and also works for Weerklank (Dutch Hearing Voices Network) and the TREE project, The Netherlands
Susie Crooks, Voice hearer, Mad & Proud, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
Lloyd Ross, Ph.D., FACAPP., P.A., New Jersey, USA
Catherine Penney, RN, USA
Nancy Burke, PhD, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, USA
Nels Kurt Langsten, M.D., USA
Michael S. Garfinkle, PhD, New York, USA
Andy Phee RMN, community mental health nurse,Kings Cross,London,facilitated a hearing voices group for 10 years, member of the London HearingVoices Project advisory group. England, UK
Helen Sheppard, AMHP, West Yorkshire, Engalnd, UK.
Dr Gillian Proctor, Clincial Psychologist. Bradford, UK
Jane Forrest, sister of voice hearer, Sweden
Tami Williams, Ph.D., Licensed School Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist, Psychiatric Survivor, USA
Lone Jeppesen, Works as a social teacher in an institution with a lot of voice hearers and the diagnosis of schizophrenia, INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark
Judith Haire, author and voice hearer, Ramsgate, Kent, England, UK
Peter Lehmann, Peter Lehmann Publishing, Berlin, Germany / Eugene, OR / Shrewsbury, UK
Sigari Luckwell, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Bunbury Clinic, INTERVOICE supporter, Western Australia
Will Hall, voice hearer with schizophrenia diagnosis, founder of Portland hearing voices, host of madnessradio.net, USA
Richard Gray, specialist mental health support worker, random hearer/ seer of voices, visions and past lives. HVN NZ treasurer. New Zealand
Jacqueline Roy, Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University, England, UK
Dr Mike Jackson, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Betsi Cadwaldr University Health Board, North Wales
Frank Blankenship, Chair of Affiliate Support Committee, MindFreedom International, MindFreedom Florida Gainesville, Florida USA
Dorothy Dundas, psychatric survivor, MA, USA
Sigrun Tømmerås, mental health acitvist/ childhood abuse survivor, Norway
Karyn Baker BSW, MSW, RSW, Executive Director, Family Outreach and Response Program, Toronto, Canada
Monika Hoffmann psychologist and co-founders of the "NeSt", the German Hearing Voices Network, Germany
Paul Beelen connected to the INTERVOICE network and voice hearer, The Netherlands
Rossa Forbes Holistic Schizophrenia, North America
Teresa Keedwell Voice Hearer Support Group, Palmerston North New Zealand
Yutaka Fujimoto Psychologist, Tokyo Metropolitan Govemment Mental Health and Welfare Cente, vice president of the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology, member of the Hearing Voices Network Japan. Tokyo, Japan
Cheontell Barnes High support mental health worker and voices group co-facilitator Brighton UK
Yutaka Fujimoto Psychologist, Tokyo Metropolitan Govemment Mental Health and Welfare Cente, vice president of the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology, member of the Hearing Voices Network Japan. Tokyo, Japan
Pino Pini, Psychiatrist, Mental Health Europe, INTERVOICE supporter, Italy
Ivona Amleh Psychiatrist, Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, Palestine
John Robinson, Integrative Therapist (and voice hearer) for the Hearing Voices Project, SE London
Yann Derobert Psychotherapist, France
Indigo Daya , Voices Vic Project Manager, Melbourne, Australia
Stephen McGowan , Early Intervention in Psychosis Lead. Yorkshire and the Humber Improvement Programme, UK
Adam James Editor and award winning journalist, psychminded.co.uk, UK
Tori Reeve, counsellor, member of HVN, Intervoice supporter, UK.
A. C. Sterk MA Ppsychologist and psychotherapist, director of the Ann Lee Centre community mental health project, and person with previous experience of psychosis. Manchester, UK.
Geoff Brennan Nurse Consultant Psychosocial Interventions for Acute Inpatient Care, Berkshire healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Co-editor Serious Mental Illness a manual for clinical practice”, UK
Lyn Mahboub voice hearer, trainer, consultant, mother, daughter, student, teacher and, also, one who has navigated the psychiatric service system, Australia
Kristin Hedden, Ph.D. VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Tacoma, Washington, USA 126
Agna Bartels MSc , psychologist and researcher in the University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands.
Rita Brooks, BS in Human Services Recovery Consultant, writer and producer of DVD called: The Reality of Recovery, Covington, Kentucky, USA
Angel Moore David Romprey Oregon Warmline, Oregon, USA

Chuck Hughes Corresponding Secretary Los Angeles County Clients Coalition, USA
Amy Sanderson, Bradford Early Intervention in Psychosis Team, UK
Pam Pinder parent of voice hearer, Plymouth, Devon, UK
Gerard van de Willige MSC psychologist and researcher, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
Mette Askov voice hearer with the diagnosis of schizoprenia and on the road to recovery, INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark
Claire Attwood , Voice hearer and mental health support worker, Isle of Wight. UK,
Alberto Diaz MSc Argentinian psychologist, PhD student in collective health at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, researching mental health, special interest schizophrenia, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
Barney Holmes, running a Level 1 Affiliate - MindFreedom, Lancaster, UK
Cindy Highsmith Myron psychiatric survivor, completely recovered from voice hearing and severe mental illness, mental health professional and life coach for persons with mental illness in a self-directed care program, INTERVOICE supporter, Florida, USA
Mad Hatters of Bath We are a group of people who have experienced mental extremes, including hearing voices and seeing visions. Bath, England, UK
Karin Daniels mother of a voice hearing daughter who suffered a lot, but who has now recovered. Maastricht, The Netherlands
Jim Probert, PhD Psychologist, Student Health Care Center, University of Florida, USA
Dr David Lee Clinical Psychologist, Dept of Psychological Therapies, Royal Bolton Hospital, Bolton, Supporter of INTERVOICE, UK
Professor Sue Cowan, Registered Mental Health Nurse and Chartered Health Psychologist, University of Abertay Dundee, Scotland, UK
Paul Harris psychotherapist and support worker based in the UK
Marina Beteva voices hearer for 8-9 years, on medication treatment, Moscow, Russia
Monica Cassani North Carolina, USA
Rikke Bitsch Denmark
Afaf Swaity Nursing Director of Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, Palestine
Mary Maddocks MindFreedom Ireland, Ireland
Tania Linden North Lincolnshire Early Intervention Service, UK
Rosemaree Ashford honours psychology student, recovery worker, Richmond Fellowship of WA, Australia
Gemma Hendry Trainee Clinical Psychologist with a specialist interest in Community Psychology and Voice hearing, UK
Erica van den Akker Social worker in Forensic Psychiatry, The Netherlands
Caroline von Taysen psychologist, Netzwerk Stimmenhören, Germany and Normal Difference, Mental Health Kariobangi in Kenya, Germany
Poppy Rollinson Mental Health Nurse, Brighton, UK
Vanessa Jackson Vanessa Jackson Healing Circles, Inc. , USA
Dr. Julie Arthur Kirby Supporter of INTERVOICE and Senior Lecturer, UK
Peter Bullimore Expert by experience, Asylum Associates, UK
Paul Cheminais voice hearer, Bournemouth, UK 159

Further information:

INTERVOICE - The international community for hearing voices.

Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices.

We have found there are many people who hear voices, yet are not troubled by them or have found their own ways of coping with them outside of psychiatric care. This is very significant as it shows you can hear voices and remain healthy.

However, there are also significant numbers of voice hearers who are overwhelmed by the negative and disempowering aspects of the experience. Many are diagnosed as having a serious mental health problem such as schizophrenia – a harmful and stigmatizing concept, in our eyes.

The experience of hearing voices prevents some people from living a fulfilled life in society (especially those in psychiatric and social care) and can lead to having a very poor quality of life. We seek to enable voice hearers troubled by their experience to change their relationship and attitude to their voices and to take up their lives again. We also want to ensure that our innovatory approach is better known by professionals, family members and friends.

We have spent the last 20 years trying to better understand why some people can cope with the experience and others can’t. We have discovered that those people who are not able to cope with their voices, on the whole have not been able to cope with the traumatic events that lay at the roots of their voice hearing experience.

Many voices can be unthreatening and even positive. “It’s wrong to turn this into a shameful problem that people either feel they have to deny or to take medication to suppress.” - Professor Marius Romme

See articles about our work with children here:

Silencing unwelcome voices in children, The Guardian, 22/11/2001
A psychosocial therapist in Holland has adapted an innovative approach to voice hearing to help very young children dispel the imaginary friends that become realistic foes. Read article here

'She was like a personal coach': An account of hearing voices as a child, The Guardian, 16/11/2001. Read article here

Most children hearing voices stop within three years, Royal College of Psychiatry, 03/09/2002. Read article here

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Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey in response to the programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”

2009-10-18T23:24:00Z

Updated 04/11/2009

19th October 2009

Open letter to Oprah Winfrey in response to her program about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”

This is an open letter addressed to Oprah Winfrey and intended to be seen by the public through newspapers and other media, such as a letter to the editor, or included in websites, blogs, Facebook etc.

If you want to add your support, send me your name and some details about who you are and where you live. The more people who sign up the better. You can do this by adding your comments and details to the comment box at the bottom of the page.

Best wishes and my heartfelt thanks for the many suggestions and messages of support.

You can see the program about Jani and the accompanying article here

You can download a copy of the open letter here

Paul Baker

Introduction: This letter has been written in response to the Oprah Winfrey programme about Jani "The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic” broadcast on the 6th October 2009. We want to tell you about an alternative and more empowering approach to the experience of hearing voices. To date 151 members of the mental health community from 19 countries around the world, including voice hearers, relatives, citizens, academics and educators, psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists, nurses and researchers have been moved to sign this letter. Such is the level of concern we feel about Jani.

Dear Oprah

We are writing this letter in response to your programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”. This concerned Jani, a child who hears voices, and was broadcast on the 6th October 2009.

We do so in the hope we can provide a more hopeful and positive alternative to the generally pessimistic picture offered by the members of the mental health community featured in the programme, and in the accompanying article on your website.

What upset us most and moved us to write the letter, is that, as a result of the program, parents of children who have similar experiences to Jani will be left with the impression that they are powerless and will not be able to do anything constructive to help their children to come to terms with their experience of hearing voices.

For it is simply not true that nothing can be done.

We say this because we have been researching and working with adults and children like Jani and their parents for the last twenty years, and in doing so have reached very different conclusions from the ones reported on your program.

We write this letter primarily for parents and carer givers, in the hope that it will enable them to develop a new and more empowering way of thinking about their children´s experiences, and that it will help them to find ways to help those children with their emotional development and with recovering from being overwhelmed by hearing voices.

Unfortunately, there is very little practical advice available about children who hear voices which addresses the needs of parents or other members of the family. This is a shame because they are the most important form of support to such children. So, we want you to know that there are some simple commonsense things that parents can do to help children who hear voices - even children in seemingly hopeless situations, like Jani.

We would like to make the following observations:

One of our founding members, Dr. Sandra Escher from the Netherlands, is an expert on the issue of children who hear voices. She has spent the last fifteen years talking to children who hear voices, and to their parents and carer givers. To date, on this issue, Sandra has carried out the most detailed and thorough research in the world. As a result of her work she offers a new perspective on what troubling voices may represent, and how parents can help a child cope if he or she hears voices.

First of all, from the research carried out into the experience of adults and children who hear voices it has become apparent that::

To hear voices in itself is a normal experience. Of course it is unusual, but at some time or another, many people hear a voice when nobody else is actually present.

However, it is possible for people to become ill as a result of hearing voices when they cannot cope with them.

For most children (60%) the voices disappear over time as the child develops and as they learn to cope with life's problems, and with the emotions and feelings involved with those problems, which led to the voices starting in the first place.

Several large-scale population (epidemiological) studies have shown that about 4 % of the population hear voices. Of this 4%, about 30% seek assistance from mental health services. Amongst children, however, even more hear voices (8%), and as with adults, about 30% are referred to the mental health services.

This means that there are apparently many more people who hear voices who do not require the support of mental health services than those who do. This is because the majority can cope with their voices and function well in everyday life.

Unfortunately, most of the information that we have about the experience of hearing voices comes exclusively from research with patients: people who obviously cannot cope with the voices and needed help. These are people who feel that the voices made them feel powerless and who were overwhelmed by them. This is the case for research about adults and children who are hearing voices.

However, in our research we found that a common theme in both groups (adults and children) is the high percentage of traumatic experiences that have been the trigger for hearing voices. In adults, around 75% began to hear voices in relationship to a trauma or situation that made them feel powerless. Examples of the kinds of traumas that trigger voices include the death of a loved one, divorce, losing a job, failing an exam, but also longer lasting situations like being physically, emotionally or sexually abused.

The percentage of traumatic experience found as the trigger to hearing voices was even higher amongst children. It stood at 85%, with some traumas specifically related to childhood. These traumas might include being bullied by peers or teachers, or being unable to perform at a certain level at school. Another commonly reported traumatic incident related to hearing voices was being admitted to a hospital for a long time due to a physical illness.

Generally, our research indicates that hearing voices is a reaction to a situation or a problem the child or young person cannot cope with. Voices act as messengers and it may well be a mistake to try to kill the messenger - for instance through administering medication.

Another striking finding is that what the voices say often indicates the problem which troubles the child, but in an elliptical manner. Take just one example: The voices told an 8-year-old boy to blind himself. This frightened his mother. But when we discussed whether there was something in the life of the boy he could not face, she understood the voices’ message. The boy could not cope with his parents’ problematic marriage. He did not want to see it.

In Jani's case, has anyone tried to establish why the rat is called "Wednesday", why the girl is called "24 Hours", and why is the cat called "400"? What do these mean for her? Are there reasons behind this? Furthermore, why did she want people to call her "Blue-Eyed Tree Frog" and "Jani Firefly".

Is this something she associated with safety, and if so why?

Our research also revealed that when full attention was given to the problems facing the child, he or she was able to establish a more constructive relationship with the voices. As a result children became less afraid of their voices. When a child is able to consider the problems that are at the root of his or her distress, and with the emotions and feelings involved, the child is no longer preoccupied with the voices.

Recently, Sandra conducted a three-year follow up study on eighty children who heard voices, aged between 8 and 19. Half of this group received mental health care because of their voices. However, the other half were not given any special care at all. She interviewed the children four times, at yearly intervals. By the end of the research period 60% of the children reported that the voices had disappeared.

Of course figures and statistics like this do not directly relate to Jani. But the overall message is that the chance that the voices might disappear are quite high.

We saw that when children have problems which bring on the experience of hearing voices, their ability to learn to cope with their voices is inhibited. However, if the problems were dealt with or the child’s situation changed - for example, because of changing schools - the voices disappeared.

It is important that we appreciate that the desire to make the voices disappear is a goal of the mental health care services and not necessarily that of the children themselves. There are some children who did not want to lose their voices. This is OK, for the most significant thing is that the voices no longer remain at the center of their attention. This is because, as the relationship with the voices change and became more positive, instead of hindering the child the voices start to take on an advisory role. If children find within themselves the resources to cope with their voices, and the emotions involved with hearing them, then they can begin to lead happier and more balanced lives.

The most important element in the process of positively changing a child's relationship with his or her voice is support from the family. Unfortunately, our research has shown that being in the mental health care system had no positive effect on the voices. However, we did find that what had a positive influence on how the child coped with hearing voices was being referred to a psychotherapist who accepted the reality of the voices and was prepared to discuss their meaning with the child.

We also saw that ‘normalizing’ the experience can help parents to deal with the voices. Try not to think of it as a terrible disaster but rather as a signal for something that troubles your child and which can be resolved.

On the other hand, if parents cannot accept that hearing voices is fairly normal, but believe only that it is a symptom of an illness, and are afraid of them, then the child naturally picks up this feeling. Imagine for a moment if you were the child and were afraid of the voices, and when you looked for support from your parents you found that they were even more afraid of the voices than you. Obviously, this would put you under great pressure and probably mean that you would become reluctant to talk about your experiences at all.

There is a second problem. If a person is afraid of the voices then he or she can become obsessed simply by the fear of them. If one is distressed and anxious one cannot listen very well to the story a child tells about his or her experiences. This means that a sympathetic other may fail to pick up on the related emotions and problems that the voices represent.

In our experience, what helps children the most is a systematic approach to understanding the voices. So, in order to help we have developed an interview to help map the experience. This can be used as a way to understand the stress the child is under, and then to work together to find solutions for the problems raised by the experience of hearing voices.

We would like to offer this 10-point guide for parents, indicating what they can do if their child tells them that he or she hears voices:

1. Try not to over react. Although it is understandable that you will be worried, work hard not to communicate your anxiety to your child.
2. Accept the reality of the voice experience for your child: ask about the voices, how long the child has been hearing them, who or what they are, do they have names, what they say, etc.
3. Let your child know that lots of children hear voices and that usually they go away after a while.
4. Even if the voices do not disappear your child might learn to live in harmony with his or her voices
5. It is important to break down your child's sense of isolation and difference from other children. Your child is special - unusual perhaps, but really not abnormal.
6. Find out if your child has any difficulties or problems that he or she finds very hard to cope with, and work on trying to fix those problems. Think back to when the voices first started. When did the voices arise for the first time? What was happening to your child when the voices first appeared? Was there anything unusual or stressful that might have occurred?
7. If you think you need outside help, find a therapist who is prepared to accept your child's experience and work systematically with him or her to understand and cope better with the voices.
8. Be ready to listen to your child if he or she wants to talk about the voices. Use drawing, painting, acting and other creative ways to help the child to describe what is happening in his or her life.
9. Get on with your lives and try not to let the experience of hearing voices become the centre of your child's life or your own.
10. Most children who live well with their voices have supportive families around them who accept the experience as part of who their child is. You can do this too!

In conclusion we would like to stress that, in our view, labeling a seven-year-old child as schizophrenic and subjecting her to powerful psychotropic medication and periodic hospitalization is unlikely to help resolve her problems with voices. Indeed, the opposite is most probable: Jani will simply become more powerless when it comes to finding ways to cope with her voices.

Because your well respected, award winning show reaches out to so many people, we are concerned that there will be many viewers who will be left with the impression that the kind of treatment Jani receives is the only one available. If this is the case then there will be children who will be subjected to an unnecessary lifetime in psychiatric care because their families believe there are no alternatives. It is very important to recognise that hearing voices, in itself, is not a sign of psychopathology - and - voice hearers who are patients can be helped to recover from their problems by being supported in developing their own ways of coping with their emotions.

We hope you will give consideration to the possibility of making a future program showing the other side of the story, one of hope, optimism and with a focus on recovery. Perhaps you could make a program about a child with similar voice experiences to Jani, who has been helped to come to terms with her or his voices and to discuss with the child, parents and therapists how this was achieved? If there is anyway we could help make this happen, please contact us.

We look forward to hearing from you on the issues raised in our letter.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Baker
INTERVOICE coordinator

Signed by 151 people from 19 countries, listed in order of the time they were received.

Dr. Sandra Escher, Board member of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
Professor Marius Romme, psychiatrist, MD, PhD, President of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
Dirk Corstens, Social psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Chair of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
Paul Baker, coordinator of INTERVOICE, Spain
Jacqui Dillon, consultant trainer and voice hearer, chair of Hearing Voices Network England, board member of INTERVOICE, UK
Ron Coleman, consultant trainer and voice hearer, board member of INTERVOICE, UK
Hywel Davies, B.A. (Combined Honours) PGCE Chair : Hearing Voices Network Cymru (Wales), honorary board member of INTERVOICE; UK
Amanda R. E. Aller Lowe, MS, LPC, LCPC, QMRP - Agency Partner, Communities In Schools & Area Representative, The Center for Cultural Interchange, Aurora, Illinois, INTERVOICE supporter, USA
Adrienne Giacon, Secretary and Hearing Voices Network Support group facilitator Hearing Voices Network Aotearoa, INTERVOICE member, New Zealand
Dr John Read, Associate Professor, Psychology Department, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Ann-Louise S. Silver, MD, founder and past president, International Society for the Psychological Treatments of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses (www.isps-us.org), ISPS-US, USA
Matthew Morrissey, MA, MFT, Board Member, MindFreedom International, Northern California Coordiator, ISPS-US, San Franciso, USA
Irene van de Giessen, former voice hearer and foster-daughter of Willem van Staalen and Willem van Staalen, voice integrating foster-father of Irene, The Netherlands
Olga Runciman, consultant trainer and voice hearer (BSc psychiatric nurse and graduate student in psychology), INTERVOICE member, Denmark
Professor Wilma Boevink, Chair of Stichting Weerklank (Netherlands Hearing Voices Network), Professor of Recovery, Hanze University; Trimbos-Institute (the Dutch Institute of Mental Health and Addiction), The Netherlands
Marian B. Goldstein, voicehearer, (fully recovered thanks to trauma-focussed therapy, the opportunity to make sense of the voices) INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark
Professor Dr J. van Os, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, INTERVOICE supporter, The Netherlands
Virginia Pulker, Mental health Occupational Therapist with young people with psychosis, recovery promoter, HVN Australia, Northern Ireland and England. INTERVOICE supporter, UK/Australia
Professor Richard Bentall, PhD, Chair Clinical Psychology, University of Bangor, INTERVOICE supporter, Wales, UK
Alessandra Santoni, professional working in a Mental Health Service of Milan, voice hearer and facilitator of a hearing voices group, INTERVOICE supporter,Italy
Geraldo Peixoto and Dulce Edie Pedro dos Santos, São Vicente - Est. São Paulo - INTERVOICE supporter, Brasil
Joanna & Andrzej Skulski, INTERVOICE supporters, Polska
Darby Penney, INTERVOICE supporter and President, The Community Consortium, Inc., Albany, NY, USA
Jacqueline Hayes, researcher at Manchester University about hearing voices in 'non-patients' and therapist, UK
Phil Virden, MA, MA, Executive Editor, Asylum Magazine, UK
Matthew Morris, Mental Health Locality Manager, East Suffolk Outreach Team, Suffolk Mental Health Partnerships NHS Trust, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Ros Thomas, Young Peoples Worker, Gateway Community Heath, Wodonga Victoria, INTERVOICE supporter, Australia
Dr. Rufus May Dclin/ Consultant Clinical Psychologist, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Dr. Simon Jones, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Dr. Louis Tinnin, Psychiatrist, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA
Linda Gantt, PhD, Intensive Trauma Therapy, Inc., USA
Burton Norman Seitler, Ph.D., New Jersey Institute for training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescence Psychotherapy Studies
Ron Bassman, PhD., Founding member of International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery (INTAR), Past president of The National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy, USA
Michael O'Loughlin, Adelphi University, NY, USA
Dorothy Scotten, Ph.D., LCSW, USA
Marilyn Charles, Ph.D., The Austen Riggs Center, USA
Bex Shaw, Psychotherapist, London, UK
Ira Steinman, MD, author of “TREATING the 'UNTREATABLE' : Healing in the Realms of Madness”, USA
Mike Lawson, Ex Vice Chair National MIND UK 1988-1992, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D., B.C.S.A., International Center for Humane Psychiatry, USA
Ron Unger LCSW, Therapist, USA
Daniel B Fisher (Boston, MA): Person who recovered from what is called schizophrenia, Executive Director National Empowerment Center; National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/survivor Org., member of Interrelate an international coalition of national consumer/user groups, community psychiatrist, Cambridge, Mass., USA
Mary Madrigal, USA
Paul Hammersley, University of Manchester, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Phil Benjamin, mental health nurse and voices consultant, Australia
Eleanor Longden, Bradford Early Intervention in Psychosis Sevice, England, UK
Karen Taylor RMN, director Working to Recovery, Scotland, UK
Bill George, MA, PGCE, Member of the Anoiksis Think Tank, The Netherlands
Dr Andrew Moskowitz, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
John Exell, BA(Hons), Dip Arch, voice-hearer, sculptor, artist, writer, poet, UK.
Tineke Nabben, a voice hearer who has learned to cope with her voices and student, learning to help other children and parents to cope with their voices. Germany
Marcello Macario, psychiatrist, Community Mental Health Centre of Carcare, Italy, INTERVOICE supporter, Italy
Ian Parker, Professor of Psychology, co-director of the Discourse Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University, England, UK
David Harper, PhD, Reader in Clinical Psychology, School of Psychology, University of East London, England, UK
Wakio Sato, representative of the Hearing Voices Network - Japan. President of the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology. The representative of an NPO named "Linden" for community mental health in Konko town, Okayama prefecture, Japan
Suzette van IJssel, Ph.D., spiritual counsel and voice hearer, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Jeannette Woolthuis, psycho-social therapist working with children hearing voices, The Netherlands
Dr. Louise Trygstad, Professor Emerita, University of San Francisco School of Nursing, USA
Erik Olsen, Board member ENUSP European Network of Users (x)-users and Survivors of Psychiatry and Executive Committee in European Dsability Forum (EDF)
Astrid Zoetbrood, recovered from psychosis and voices, the Netherlands
Christine Brown, RMN, Hearing Voices Network Scotland, INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Rachel Waddingham,Manager of the London Hearing Voices Project (inc. Voice Collective: Young People's Hearing Voices Project), trainer and voice-hearer, UK
Joel Waddingham, Husband and supporter of someone who hears voices, sees visions and has other unusual experiences, UK
Professor Robin Buccheri, RN, MHNP, DNSc, University of San Francisco, CA, USA
Jørn Eriksen, Board member of INTERVOICE, the Danish Hearing Voices Network and The International Mental Health Collaboration Network, Denmark
Douglas Holmes, voice hearer working in a Mental Health Service in Darlinghurst, Sydney, and facilitator of a hearing voices group, INTERVOICE supporter, Australia
Matthew Winter, Student Mental Health Nurse and INTERVOICE supporter
Anneli Westling, Relative of a voice hearer from Stockholm, Sweden
Lia Govers, recovered voice hearer, Italy
Molly Martyn, MA in Clinical Mental Health, Hearing Voices Network of Denver, USA
Tsuyoshi Matsuo, MD, INTERVOICE supporter, Japan
Janet M. Patterson RN, BSN, USA
Odette Nightsky, Sensitive Services International, Australia
Barbara Belton, M.S., M.S. trauma survivor who has recovered and former behavioral health professional, USA
Luigi Colaianni, PhD sociologist, researcher, Community Mental Health Centre, Milano, Italy
Teresa Keedwell, Voice Hearer Support Group, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Maria Haarmans, MA, Canadian Representative INTERVOICE, Canada
Ami Rohnitz, Voice hearer, Sweden
Sharon Jones, University of York, INTERVOICE Supporter, England, UK
Gail A. Hornstein, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College, USA
Siri Blesvik, INTERVOICE supporter, Norway
Lynn Seaton, mental health nurse, Scottish Hearing Voices Network and INTERVOICE supporter, UK
Rozi Pattison, Clinical Psychologist, CAMHS, Kapiti Health Centre, PARAPARAUMU, New Zealand
Suzanne Engelen, Experience Focussed Counselling Institute (efc) and member of INTERVOICE. She is an expert by experience and also works for Weerklank (Dutch Hearing Voices Network) and the TREE project, The Netherlands
Susie Crooks, Voice hearer, Mad & Proud, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
Lloyd Ross, Ph.D., FACAPP., P.A., New Jersey, USA
Catherine Penney, RN, USA
Nancy Burke, PhD, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, USA
Nels Kurt Langsten, M.D., USA
Michael S. Garfinkle, PhD, New York, USA
Andy Phee RMN, community mental health nurse,Kings Cross,London,facilitated a hearing voices group for 10 years, member of the London HearingVoices Project advisory group. England, UK
Helen Sheppard, AMHP, West Yorkshire, Engalnd, UK.
Dr Gillian Proctor, Clincial Psychologist. Bradford, UK
Jane Forrest, sister of voice hearer, Sweden
Tami Williams, Ph.D., Licensed School Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist, Psychiatric Survivor, USA
Lone Jeppesen, Works as a social teacher in an institution with a lot of voice hearers and the diagnosis of schizophrenia, INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark
Judith Haire, author and voice hearer, Ramsgate, Kent, England, UK
Peter Lehmann, Peter Lehmann Publishing, Berlin, Germany / Eugene, OR / Shrewsbury, UK
Sigari Luckwell, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Bunbury Clinic, INTERVOICE supporter, Western Australia
Will Hall, voice hearer with schizophrenia diagnosis, founder of Portland hearing voices, host of madnessradio.net, USA
Richard Gray, specialist mental health support worker, random hearer/ seer of voices, visions and past lives. HVN NZ treasurer. New Zealand
Jacqueline Roy, Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University, England, UK
Dr Mike Jackson, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Betsi Cadwaldr University Health Board, North Wales
Frank Blankenship, Chair of Affiliate Support Committee, MindFreedom International, MindFreedom Florida Gainesville, Florida USA
Dorothy Dundas, psychatric survivor, MA, USA
Sigrun Tømmerås, mental health acitvist/ childhood abuse survivor, Norway
Karyn Baker BSW, MSW, RSW, Executive Director, Family Outreach and Response Program, Toronto, Canada
Monika Hoffmann psychologist and co-founders of the "NeSt", the German Hearing Voices Network, Germany
Paul Beelen connected to the INTERVOICE network and voice hearer, The Netherlands
Rossa Forbes Holistic Schizophrenia, North America
Teresa Keedwell Voice Hearer Support Group, Palmerston North New Zealand
Cheontell Barnes High support mental health worker and voices group co-facilitator Brighton, UK
Yutaka Fujimoto Psychologist, Tokyo Metropolitan Govemment Mental Health and Welfare Cente, vice president of the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology, member of the Hearing Voices Network Japan. Tokyo, Japan
Pino Pini, Psychiatrist, Mental Health Europe, INTERVOICE supporter, Italy
Ivona Amleh Psychiatrist, Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, Palestine
John Robinson, Integrative Therapist (and voice hearer) for the Hearing Voices Project, SE London
Yann Derobert Psychotherapist, France
Indigo Daya , Voices Vic Project Manager, Melbourne, Australia
Stephen McGowan , Early Intervention in Psychosis Lead. Yorkshire and the Humber Improvement Programme, UK
Adam James Editor and award winning journalist, psychminded.co.uk, UK
Tori Reeve, counsellor, member of HVN, Intervoice supporter, UK.
A. C. Sterk MA Ppsychologist and psychotherapist, director of the Ann Lee Centre community mental health project, and person with previous experience of psychosis. Manchester, UK.
Geoff Brennan Nurse Consultant Psychosocial Interventions for Acute Inpatient Care, Berkshire healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Co-editor Serious Mental Illness a manual for clinical practice”, UK
Lyn Mahboub voice hearer, trainer, consultant, mother, daughter, student, teacher and, also, one who has navigated the psychiatric service system, Australia
Kristin Hedden, Ph.D. VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Tacoma, Washington, USA
Agna Bartels MSc , psychologist and researcher in the University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands.
Rita Brooks, BS in Human Services Recovery Consultant, writer and producer of DVD called: The Reality of Recovery, Covington, Kentucky, USA
Angel Moore David Romprey Oregon Warmline, Oregon, USA
Chuck Hughes Corresponding Secretary Los Angeles County Clients Coalition, USA
Amy Sanderson, Bradford Early Intervention in Psychosis Team, UK
Pam Pinder parent of voice hearer, Plymouth, Devon, UK
Gerard van de Willige MSC psychologist and researcher, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
Mette Askov voice hearer with the diagnosis of schizoprenia and on the road to recovery, INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark
Claire Attwood , Voice hearer and mental health support worker, Isle of Wight. UK,
Alberto Diaz MSc Argentinian psychologist, PhD student in collective health at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, researching mental health, special interest schizophrenia, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
Barney Holmes, running a Level 1 Affiliate - MindFreedom, Lancaster, UK
Cindy Highsmith Myron psychiatric survivor, completely recovered from voice hearing and severe mental illness, mental health professional and life coach for persons with mental illness in a self-directed care program, INTERVOICE supporter, Florida, USA
Mad Hatters of Bath We are a group of people who have experienced mental extremes, including hearing voices and seeing visions. Bath, England, UK
Karin Daniels mother of a voice hearing daughter who suffered a lot, but who has now recovered. Maastricht, The Netherlands
Jim Probert, PhD Psychologist, Student Health Care Center, University of Florida, USA
Dr David Lee Clinical Psychologist, Dept of Psychological Therapies, Royal Bolton Hospital, Bolton, Supporter of INTERVOICE, UK
Professor Sue Cowan, Registered Mental Health Nurse and Chartered Health Psychologist, University of Abertay Dundee, Scotland, UK
Paul Harris psychotherapist and support worker based in the UK
Marina Beteva voices hearer for 8-9 years, on medication treatment, Moscow, Russia
Monica Cassani North Carolina, USA
Rikke Bitsch Denmark
Afaf Swaity Nursing Director of Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, Palestine
Mary Maddocks MindFreedom Ireland, Ireland
Tania Linden North Lincolnshire Early Intervention Service, UK
Rosemaree Ashford honours psychology student, recovery worker, Richmond Fellowship of WA, Australia
Gemma Hendry Trainee Clinical Psychologist with a specialist interest in Community Psychology and Voice hearing, UK
Erica van den Akker Social worker in Forensic Psychiatry, The Netherlands
Caroline von Taysen psychologist, Netzwerk Stimmenhören, Germany and Normal Difference, Mental Health Kariobangi in Kenya, Germany
Poppy Rollinson Mental Health Nurse, Brighton, UK
Vanessa Jackson Vanessa Jackson Healing Circles, Inc. , USA
Dr. Julie Arthur Kirby Supporter of INTERVOICE and Senior Lecturer, UK 157
Peter Bullimore Expert by experience, Asylum Associates, UK

Further information:

INTERVOICE - The international community for hearing voices.

Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices.

See articles about our work with children here:

'She was like a personal coach': An account of hearing voices as a child, The Guardian, 16/11/2001. Read article here

Most children hearing voices stop within three years, Royal College of Psychiatry, 03/09/2002. Read article here

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Lessons on voices from St John of the Cross by Dr. Simon Jones

2009-10-09T22:01:00Z

Updated 090/10/2009

Print version of this article can be downloaded here

Today we live in a world where the experiences of hearing voices and seeing visions are very often viewed by psychiatry through a biological/medical lens. This approach encourages psychiatry to view such experiences as the random, meaningless outpourings of a diseased brain. This has had some catastrophic effects. For example, the meaningful relation between many voices and earlier traumatic experiences has been overlooked for years. Thankfully though, due to the worldwide Hearing Voices Movement, and research by those such as John Read, voices are now seen as meaningful events, and the relation with trauma recognized. However, the biological/medical model remains dominant among psychiatrists and academics, and many aspects of voices and visions, not consistent with a random malfunctioning brain, are still overlooked. One way to get a sense of what properties of voices and visions the biological/medical model causes us to overlook is to head back in time to a different time, culture, and context, which didn’t have a predominantly medical view of such experiences. One such account is given by the 16th century Spanish theologian, St John of the Cross.

St John of the Cross has been called the greatest psychologist in the history of mysticism. He was a member of the Catholic Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which was characterised by prayer, silence, meditation and contemplation. Just like the early Desert Hermits, silence and contemplation seems to have opened the door to voices and visions for St John. He was born in a poor family in Spain in 1542, and led a varied and exciting life, at one point being imprisoned for nine months in solitary confinement in a dark, cramped cell, measuring only 6 by 10 feet. After an Errol Flynn-esque escape, using a rope made from strips of bed-sheets, he spent the rest of his life writing, guiding, praying and directing the spiritual development of others across Spain. It has been written that no person knows what to do with the divine when it falls into their hands. Fortunately for us, St John decided to write about it, and he left behind him a systematic analysis of his experiences, which he termed supernatural communications.

When we look at St John’s analyses of these experiences, we find that there are a number experiences that he describes that are not given significant attention by contemporary research. The first can be called ‘voices that save’. St John classified hearing voices (or ‘locutions’ as he termed them) into three types: successive, formal and substantial. The latter type, substantial locutions, is probably the most interesting. St John argued that “one of these words works greater good within the soul than all that the soul itself has done throughout its life”.

St Teresa of Avila, a colleague of St John’s, noted that people who heard phrases heard such as “It is I (God), fear not” found them exceedingly powerful, calming and influential, and the memory of these voices could last for a lifetime. Such powerful and positive voices are still reported today. For example, Heathcote-James (2001) cites a contemporary account of a healthy woman, in a distressing situation, hearing a voice saying “But you have trust in God”. As a result of this, the woman described how she “felt great consolation and joy. I just cannot describe the sense that I felt, it was so beautiful it was indescribable”. These voices often seem to occur when people are in danger, under stress, or under physical or existential threat. For example, the mountaineer Joe Simpson, after a horrific climbing accident, was forced to crawl for four days back to his friends’ base-camp. During the latter stages of his agonising journey he began to hear a voice which was “clean and sharp and commanding” and which told him to “Go on, keep going”. In a biological/medical model that ignores the meaningfulness or usefulness of voices, such experiences get swept under the carpet.

St John’s contemporary, St Teresa, noted that voices could refer to things that “one never thought would or could happen, so that the imagination cannot possibly have invented them”. This highlights the potentially creative nature of such experiences, and links into the relation between voices and artistic creativity. However, this aspect of AVHs is not formally researched today. This is possibly again due to the bio-medical paradigm encouraging the idea that AVHs are simply random, worthless productions of an abnormal brain. However, most of us know that many voices can give novel and creative information. For example, authors report receiving inspiring and novel ideas directly from their voices and visions (Malone, 2006) and many personal accounts highlight the novel and original nature of such experiences (e.g., Romme & Escher, 1993).

Furthermore, like many of his predecessors, St John argued that the more completely exterior the voices were (i.e., if they seemed to come from ‘out there’ in the world) the less likely they were to be from God. He also believed that such externally located experiences communicated less “than would be the case if the same things were more interior and spiritual” (p. 103). Thus, he seems to suggest that spiritual voices or visions are more likely to be felt to come from within oneself, rather than have a source in the world. Research into this area is also lacking.

Overall, St John of the Cross’s writings show that his era was able to identify aspects of voices and visions that have been neglected by the modern biological/medical model. St John was well aware of positive, useful voices, such as ‘voices that save’, as well as voices that give novel and original information, which have been mainly ignored by psychiatry today. When voices and visions become medicalised there is the risk that all such experiences are seen as worthless symptoms of an illness. Thus, it may be that it is only once we step outside the biological/medical model that we can really start to understand voices and visions.

For further discussion of many of these themes, references to sources, and a more detailed examination of St John of the Cross’s understanding of voices and visions, please see:
Jones, S.R. (in press). Re-expanding the phenomenology of hallucinations: lessons from sixteenth century Spain. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture.

Simon Jones is a psychologist and researcher interested in the history of hearing voices, the causes of hearing voices, and strategies that help people cope with voices. He received his Doctorate from Durham University in the UK.

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Ist World Hearing Voices Congress, 2009: Presentation papers

2009-09-26T18:21:00Z

Updated 06/02/2010

INTERVOICE, the international organisation for the advocacy of Hearing voices held a highly successful congress on the 17th and 18th September, 2009 in the MECC in Maastricht. You can read accounts by people who attended here and the results of the formal evaluation here

At this congress over 90 voice hearers, researchers and therapists presented key note speeeches, ran master classes and themed presentations focusing on important aspects of the recovery process. The Congress also included discussion around difficult issues such as the disease concept and the use of medication. The themes and stories heard at the Congress went beyond theory and engaged participants in the everyday lives of voice hearers and the possibility of recovery.

Over 350 psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, managers, people hearing voices, families and policymakers from 20 countries across the world were present at the largest event of its kind in the world.

Here you can view the presentations and read other material that was given out at the two day meeting:

Debates and Discussions

Why relationships matter: The role of the therapeutic alliance in CBT for psychosis Presentation outline
Richard Bentall holds a Chair in Clinical psychology at the University of Bangor, Wales, UK. He is particularly well known for his work on psychosis, delusions and hallucinations and has published extensively in this area.
The post-war years saw a period of intense therapeutic innovation following two separate traditions: a technical tradition (behaviour modiE cation) which placed its faith in psychological theory, and an interpersonal tradition (associated with Carl Rogers) which emphasized the importance of therapeutic relationships. It is widel/ assumed that the technical approach triumphed and in the present era of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) we now place our faith in particular psychological techniques. In this paper I will ask whether this faith is justified.

'Recovery – Reshaping our clinical and scientific responsibilities Presentation outlne
Dr. Michaela Amering, Medical University of Vienna Recovery in mental health; Development and Significance; Concepts & Definitions; Personal Experience as Evidence; Recovery – why not?; Implications for Scientific Responsibilities; Implications for Clinical Responsibilities

Using the media to improve our profile Presentation outline
Douglas Holmes, Voice Hearer, Australia will examine how Douglas Holmes, voice hearer from NSW, Australia has used different media including Journalism, Public relations, Films, Internet, Mobile, Publishing, Magazines, Newspapers, Mass wire media and "Personal" Media to promote hearing voices in NSW & Australia.

Geneva Questionnaire Presentation outline
Theresja Krummenacher Recording and comparing professional and public perceptions of the voice hearing experience and people who hear voices. The campaign aiming at increasing awareness of the public to intra-, extra - sensorial perceptions, especially of voices, it was a project of REEV (Voice Hearers Network).

Establishing the Italian Hearing voices Network Presentation outlne
Angelo ARECCO (Savona), Cristina CONTINI (Reggio Emilia), Marcello MACARIO (Savona), Alessandra SANTONI (Milano) describe the particular challenges faced in developing a national hearing voices network in Italy and how they overcame them.

Introduction to the Discussion about ‘Schizophrenia’ Presentation outline
Bill George has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He published his stor/ about his route to recovery in1987 in Social Work Today. In that article he describes his traumas related to sexuality both as a child and as an adult. He is a member of the Anoiksis Think Tank.

Coming off medication; a harm reduction approach Audio recording of Presentation
Will Hall Will is co-founder of the support community, Freedom Center in Massachusettts. Today Will is internationall/ recognized for his advocacy and educational work. He is a co-coordinator of The Icarus Project, host of the FM radio show, Madness Radio (www.madnessradio.net), and has been a consultant with Mental Disability Rights International. He recently started a new group in Oregon, Portland Hearing Voices.

The Japanese Solution Presentation
Wakio Sato Wakio Sato reports on the recent changes that have been made in Japan in replacing the old Japanese term for schizophrenia, “Seishin Bunretsu Byo” ( which was directly translated from “Schizophrenai” originally named by Eugen Bleuler, meaning in Japanese “mind-split-disease”, “a disease of fragmentation of spirit” or “deterioration of person”) into the new term of “Togo Shitcho Sho” (“integration disorder).

Working with voices (therapies, training, recovery practice etc)

What do voice hearers need to recover? Presentation outline
Marius Romme is founder and chair of Intervoice. Over 25 years he has together with Sandra Escher studied the hearing voices experience. In this presentation he describes the last study "Living with Voices" in which 50 voice hearers report theirrecovery. These stories form the evidence base of the accepting and making sense approach for people hearing voices, to recover from their problems and take their lives in their own hands again.

Transformational psychology and hearing voices Presentation outline
Anneloes Welling-Maassen, Fontys Hogeschool Verpleegkunde considers bonding patterns, transference /counter transference and their value in assisting people who hear voices,

Understanding and exploring voices within a relational framework Presentation outline
Mark Hayward Mediation of responses to voices, Relationships with voices, Applying a new theory of relating, Daring to talk back, Mindfully reflecting upon self

Experience Focussed Counselling Presentation outline
Joachim Schnackenberg and Suzanne Engelen Explanation of the aims and objectives of a 3-Level Basic Training Model in Experience Focussed Counselling with Voice Hearers.

Hearing Voices: An introductory course Presentation outline and a Proposal for some learning and teaching objectives for an introductory course dealing with voices
Gerritsma Japp In this contribution Jaapll: 1.Argued why a shift from teacher oriented goals to client oriented goals will facilitate learning and practice in a better way. 2.Questioned how relevant competences should be determined. 3.Showed what good objectives and their important components are. 4.Formulated possible objectives for an introductory course.

Integrative, cost-effective treatment for persistent auditory hallucinations: the HIT model Presentation outline
J.A. Jenner, MD PhD Hallucination focused Integrative Treatment

Difficulties encountered on the Rocky Road to Recovery .....and why not to give up Presentation outline
Judy Mantle

Recovery Based Working with Voice Hearers Presentation outline
Jim Chapman & Mervyn Morris

Working Together to Diminish Distressing Voices including Commands to Harm Presentation outline
Robin Buccheri, RN, DNSc, MHNP, USF & Louise Trygstad, RN, DNSc., CNS, USF

Understanding voices (meanings, theories etc)

Trauma & Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Jacqui Dillon is the Chair of the National Hearing Voices Network, England, a user led charity. The experienced trauma treatment according to Judith Herman´s book "Trauma and Recovery". Judith Herman´s landmark work, "Trauma and Recovery" presents a compelling analysis of the consequences of trauma and the process of healing from trauma. Using Herman´s stages of recovery as a theoretical framework to underpin and guide recovery.

Hearing voices and emotional neglect: Can attachment theory help us understand how unhappy childhoods can lead to psychosis? Presentation outline
John Read After twenty years working primarily with people diagnosed schizophrenic as a clinical ps/chologist and manager of mental health services, John took up an academic post in the Clinical Ps/cholog/ programme at the Vniversit/ of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994. He has published over 50 research papers - including in the areas of the relationship between adverse life events and ps/chosis.

Hearing Voices: A Common Human Experience Presentation outline
John Watkins has practiced as a mental health counsellor and educator for more than twenty years. He has a particular interest in researching and promoting holistic approaches to understanding and treating mental illness and regularl/ conducts training courses and workshops based on holistic principles. His previous books include Living with Schizophrenia and Hearing Voices: A Common Human Experience. Venturing beyond conventional treatments whose sole aim is s/mptom eradication opens up the possibilit/ of working creatively with inner voice experiences to foster personal growth, healing, and recovery.

Making sense of voices: interviewing a person who hears voices Presentation outline
Sandra Escher

Hearing Voices: What does Transpersonal Psychology have to Say? Presentation outline
Rochelle Suri

Recontextualising: To Accept And Make Sense Of Voices Presentation outline
Brendan Georgeson

Auditory hallucinations – Psychotic Symptom or Dissociative Experience? Presentation outline
Andrew Moskowitz, Ph.D. AH are dissociative experiences, NOT psychotic symptoms which MAY lead to or occur in the context of psychotic disorders if strong emotional reactions and/or an inability to engage with the voices is present.

Coming From the Beyond Presentation powerpoint and Abstract
Sigari LuckwellAre voice-hearers crazy? Are they receiving information or guidance? What do we make of St. Paul on the road to Damascus? Did he have a psychotic episode or was he inspired by the word of God? What makes the difference?

Experiencing voices

Hearing voices in children and adolescents Presentation outline
Sandra Escher

Hearing Voices Related to Severe Abuse: Introduction Of My Recovery Presentation outline
Irene van de Giessen, Voice Hearer, Netherlands I am proud of the fact that I developed from a victim into a survivor, from a survivor into a fighter and at last from a fighter into someone who accepts the facts of life.

Looking After ME - When I Hear Others Talking Presentation outline
Marlene Janssen Hearing Voices and Self-Care

Hearing voices in bereavement Presentation outline
Jacqueline Hayes

Clairaudience in the Spiritualist Church: When hearing spirits is a culturally sanctioned experience Presentation outline
Jo Temple & Dave Harper

Understanding Voices and Paranoia an Holistic Approach Presentation outline
Peter Bullimore

Positive and useful auditory vocal hallucinations Presentation outline
Sonja Rutten, MD

Experiences with people who hear voices during the last fifteen years in Prato and Florence (Italy) Presentation outline
Pino Pini

VOCAL HALLUCINATION RATING SCALE (AVHRS) (Jenner and Van de Willige, 2002), English version here and VOCAL HALLUCINATION RATING SCALE (AVHRS) (Jenner en Van de Willige, 2002) here

Other literature

Schizophrenia Campaign Poster Poster

INTERVJU MED PERSON SOM HØRER STEMMER Presentation outline
Sandra Escher & Professor Marius Romme

From Brasil Letter to the Congress
Geraldo e Dulce

See the presentations and handouts from the INTERVOICE 2009 meeting here

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INTERVOICE meeting, 14th - 16th September 2009: Presentation papers

2009-09-24T13:09:00Z

Updated 25/09/2009

The INTERVOICE premeeting was attended by over 120 voice hearers and INTERVOICE members and spporters from 21 countries, the meeting was held from Monday 14th till Wednesday to the 16th September 2009 in Valkenburg (near Maastricht), Netherlands.

Here you can view the presentations and read other material that was given out at the two day meeting:

Meeting Structure

The INTERVOICE Meeting 2 Day Programme and timetable

Introduction to Open Space Presentation outline
Marlene Janssen, coordinator of HVN Australia introduced and explains how the Open Space session on Tuesday morning would run.

Reports from developing national hearing voices networks

Hearing Voices Ireland: developments of the network Presentation outline
Brian Hartnettthe coordinator, describes the aims and objectives of the Hearing Voices Ireland (HVI), set up in 2006, its main function is to help improve and support social networking amongst people who have become isolated.

Australia: developments of the network Presentation outline
Marlene Janssen, coordinator of HVN Australia describes the development of hearing voices work in australia over the last three years.

New Zealand: developments of the network Newsletter, June 2009
Arana Pearson, coordinator of the NZ-HVN describes the development of hearing voices work in New Zealand.

Discussions

How to engage the voices in a voice hearing group Schematic outline
In this presentation by Vivi Toft from Denmark the meeting was told about a new way of running a self help group for people who hear voices. In this goup the people who voices also invite their voices to attend. Click on the schematic outline to see how this works. Vivi explained how the group operated and the benefits for the members that came from running the group in this way.

Understanding How Deaf People Understand Voices Presentation Outline
In this presentation Tori Reeve and Peter Bullimore from England described their work with deaf people who hear voices and explained how deaf people experienced hearing voices.

Hearing Voices: What has worked for us in building staff awareness and skills Presentation outline
Presented by Louise Trygstad, RN, CNS, DNSc. and Robin Buccheri, RN, MHNP, DNSc., University of San Francisco, USA.

Discussion about the structured interview for voice hearers voice hearers Presentation outline
Discussion on issues arising from using the Maastricht structured interview led bySandra Escher, PhD. and Prof. Dr. Marius Romme

Shared Information

Information about training opportunities on the Voice Dialogue method FlyerProduced by Transforming Dialogue, together with their staff they run different courses and trainings around specific themes associated with the work. They are especially interested in energy work, family systems and their effect on inner voices and psychopathology, and dreamwork.

Training Courses and Publications available from Working to Recovery Flyer
a small, dynamic and creative training and consultancy organisation, publishses books, training manuals, offers training and assistance to suit the needs of all our customers and clients. Based in Scotland and specialising in Mental Health practice, they work right across the world responding to many different training needs.

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The voice inside: A practical guide for and about people who hear voices

2009-09-24T06:50:00Z

Updated 20/10/2009

<center>

The voice inside: A practical guide for and about people who hear voices
Written and edited by Paul Baker
with contributions from Marius Romme, Sandra Escher and Ron Coleman

</center>

You can order your copy here

ISBN: 978-0-9563048-1-0

Published by P&P Press 2009

This handbook is an updated and combined version of two previously published booklets I wrote over ten years ago introducing the subject of hearing voices, they were called, Can You Hear me and The Voice Inside. Inside you will find lots of new information about the experience of hearing voices; with advice about how to cope and make sense of the experience and descriptions for voice hearers and workers of new ways of helping to cope better with troubling voices.

The information in this guide is based on research and practical work carried out in 19 countries over the last seventeen years, which for the first time comes directly from the real experts, the voice hearers themselves. In this guide we seek to answer three fundamental questions:
• what is it like to hear voices?
• why does it start and what does it mean?
• and how can people cope better - and – be helped to cope with this experience if it is troubling them?

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Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery

2009-09-22T07:33:00Z

Updated 22/09/2009

<center>

Living with Voices
50 Stories of Recovery</center></center>

Marius Romme (Editor)
Sandra Escher (Editor)
Jacqui Dillon (Editor)
Mervyn Morris (Editor)
Dirk Corstens (Editior)

Paperback

ISBN13 9781906254223

Publisher PCCS Books in association with Birmingham City University , United Kingdom

Format Paperback

Publication date 11/09/2009

Pages 346

You can order your copy online here

here

download the flyer and order form here

A new analysis of the hearing voices experience outside the illness model, resulted in accepting and making sense of voices. This study of 50 stories forms the evidence for this successful new approach to working with voice hearers.

This book demonstrates that it is entirely possible to overcome problems with hearing voices and to take back control of one’s life. It shows a path to recovery by addressing the main problems voice hearers describe – the threats, the feelings of powerlessness, the anxiety of being mad – and helps them to find their way back to their emotions and spirituality and to realising their dreams. This book also holds true for those who have been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

This is the third book in a series regarding the experience of hearing voices. It proves the value of our ‘accepting’ and ‘making sense of’ voices approach, for which it provides an evidence base.

At the heart of this book are the stories of fifty people who have recovered from the distress of hearing voices. They have overcome the disabling social and psychiatric attitudes towards voice hearing and have also fought with themselves to accept and make sense of the voices. They have changed their relationship with their voices in order to reclaim their lives.

All the people in this book describe their recovery; how they now accept their voices as personal, and how they have learnt to cope with them and have changed their relationship with them. They have discovered that their voices are not a sign of madness but a reaction to problems in their lives that they couldn’t cope with, and they have found that there is a relationship between the voices and their life history, that the voices talk about problems that they haven’t dealt with – and that they therefore make sense.

Praise for Living with Voices
'Marius Romme and Sandra Escher have revolutionized our understanding of voice hearing, and their work has led to a radical new way of helping people who have had this type of experience. In this timely, accessible and important book, they bring together the lessons they have learnt over more than two decades, and provide an opportunity for 50 voice-hearers from across the world to tell us their stories. This is essential reading for mental health workers of all professions, which challenges conventional thinking, empowers mental health service users, and looks forward to a more humane approach to psychiatric care.'
Richard Bentall, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Bangor University, Wales

Contents

Introduction Marius Romme and Mervyn Morris

1 Important Steps to Recovery with Voices
Marius Romme
2 The Disease Concept of Hearing Voices and Its Harmful Aspects
Marius Romme
3 What Causes Hearing Voices?
Marius Romme
4 Accepting Voices and Finding a Way Out
Sandra Escher
5 Making Sense of Voices: The relationship between the voices and the life history
Sandra Escher
6 Metaphors and Emotions
Marius Romme
7 Hearing Voices Groups
Marius Romme
8 Psychotherapy with Hearing Voices
Marius Romme
9 Medication
Marius Romme

Introduction to the FIFTY STORIES
Mervyn Morris

THE FIFTY STORIES
Ami Rohnitz; Andreas Gehrke; Antje Müller; Audrey Reid; Caroline; Daan Marsman
Debra Lampshire; Denise Bosman; Don Dugger; Eleanor Longden; Elisabeth Svanholmer
Fernand Chappin; Flore Brummans; Frank Dahmen; Frans de Graaf; Gavin Young
Gina Rohmit; Hannelore Klafki; Helen; Mrs Hutten; Jacqui Dillon; Jan Holloway
Jeanette Brink; Jeanette Woolthuis; Jo; John Exell ; John Robinson; Johnny Sparvang
Jolanda van Hoeij; Karina Carlyn; Lisette de Klerk; Marion Aslan; Mieke Simons
Mien Sonnemans ; Odi Oquosa; Olga Runciman; Patsy Hage; Peggy Davies; Peter Bullimore
Peter Reynolds; Riny Selder; Robert Huisman; Ron Coleman; Ronny Nilson; Rufus May
Ruth Forrest; Sasja Slotenmakers; Sjon Gijsen; Stewart Hendry; Sue Clarkson

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Your impressions of the 1st World Hearing Voices Congress & INTERVOICE meeting, Maastricht, September 2009

2009-09-21T11:54:00Z

Updated 20/09/2009

Thank you very much for participating in the 1st World Hearing Voices Congress - and - the INTERVOICE meeting too, if you went to both events.

It was great to share your company and to be alongside you in experiencing an extraordinary event. For me the core messages coming from the congress and INTERVOICE meeting is that collectively and individually the supporters of hearing voices movement are courageous, determined, creative and optimistic. Courageous in the way we are taking on the negative social and medical perceptions of the voice hearing experience and showing recovery is real; determined to bring about change in own lives and for all people who hear voices by challenging services to change; creative and optimistic in finding new ways to assist people who hear voices live their own lives and sharing them with the world.

We hope you found the presentations and workshops stimulating and informative. We would like you to tell us what you thought about both of the events, so we can share our experiences with each other (and of course those people who were unable to attend) and also to use the feedback in planning next years Congress (to be held in England).

If you took photographs, videos which you would like to share please send them to me - or - if you are a Facebook member you can subscribe to our brand new Facebook INTERVIOICE Group and add your thoughts, photos and videos there. Go here

I´ll end with an extract from the Labi Siffre song that was played at the beginning of the congress "Something inside so strong"

Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Tho' you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone
Oh no, something inside so strong
Oh oh oh oh oh something inside so strong

The more you refuse to hear my voice
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time
You squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine so brightly
It will blind you

Brothers and sisters
When they insist we're just not good enough
When we know better
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Talking to Voices

2009-09-20T18:37:00Z

Last updated 07/02/2010

We talked about the voices … Eleanor Longden, a voice hearer, describes her experience of talking to her voices in the UK mass circulation newspaper The Daily Mail, 07/02/2008
I discovered that if I engaged with the voices, they became less frequent. I also learnt to challenge the more threatening voice, refusing to do what it told me and telling myself it was no more than a symbol of my own externalised anger. .. One by one the voices gradually disappeared, until I was only occasionally hearing one… Three years on, I am healthy, happy and perfectly stable.

Talking to Voices DVD: Professor Marius Romme
See Marius Romme explaining the theoretical basis for voice dialogue work, then with the help of a voice hearer demonstrates the voice dialoguing technique. buy your own copy here

Below we have published an article by Dirk Corstens, Eleanor Longden and Rufus May

1.Why Talk With Challenging Voices

Many people who hear challenging voices have found that a turning point in learning to cope with this experience has been finding different ways of talking with and understanding their voices.
Learning to understand the motives of your voices and different ways of talking with them can help the relationship to change between the voice hearer and the voices. Techniques derived from various psychological and dramatic traditions (e.g. Gestalt, Voice Dialogue, Transactional Analysis, Psychodrama) have used chairs to act out different roles and relationships in order to help people resolve conflicts and reclaim power in their lives.
For the last ten years, a growing number of individuals have adapted this method to use with voice-hearing. We came together to write this so that others may try the technique as an aid for coping with challenging voices.

Many people engage and speak with their voices, and stances can vary from:

argumentative:
Voice: “You’re a failure”
Voice hearer: “No I’m not, go away”

To challenging:
Voice: “These people don’t like you”
Voice hearer: “Haven’t you got anything better to say?”

To submissive:
Voice: “You shouldn’t go out tonight”
Voice hearer: “All right then”

Many voice hearers experience their voices as powerfull, as if they have to obey to everything they say. That the voices tell the ultimate truth. Voices can also threaten with “punishment” to the voice hearer or beloved others.
In our approach, that is derived from “Voice Dialogue”, we try to explore the motives of the voices so that the voice hearer can find new strategies to cope with their voices. It can create a more autonomous position in which the voice hearer can make her or his own choices. Some voices even can become supportive.

Why is Voice Dialogue appropriate for voice hearers?

It is not oriented towards pathology nor is it focused upon discovering what is wrong. It offers a neutral but strong attitude to work with voices – acceptance is the core of the work.
It offers a “positive” model for the existence of voices.
It helps to built up more awareness – some distance towards the voices – and a more fruitfull relationship between voices and voicehearer.

2. Basic Principles

The basic principle is that we are not trying to change the voices; we are trying to explore their relationship with the person. Doing this work will help the individual gain a different perspective on what the voices are trying to say.
If the voice hearer can develop a more strong attitude the voices are able to change. Our aim is not to get rid of the voices but help the person take back more control in the relationship they have with the voices.

In the Voice Dialogue model everybody consists of different selves or subpersonalities. Each with its own way of perceiving the world, each with its own personal history, physical characteristics, emotional and physical reactions, and opinions on how we should run our lives. These selves serve to adapt to difficult situations. The dominant selves want to protect us from being hurt, want us to succeed in life, expect us to do what is asked by our environment. This adaptation we learn early in life. Our selves stick to what is learned to survive. Our dominant selves push away our more vulnerable parts and these, what is calles “disowned” selves become hidden and can play a significant role anymore. The selves are organised in opposites.
An example. When you are brought up with the rule: “Children that ask will be forgotten” and this is also practiced in daily life, than you develop a dominant or primary self that wants strongly to please everybody. A self that focuses at doing exactly what you think will be necessary for being liked. The opposite self, e.g. asking questions that can eventually bother other people, asking questions that can be neglected or as a person you can become rejected, will be pushed away by this strong “Pleaser”-self. The “Pleaser” doesn’t want you to take the risk of rejection.
The person with the selves organised like this doesn’t dare to ask questions, is always afraid of being rejected when she or he asks questions. This person doesn’t have a choice anymore between asking something they need or neglecting what their own needs are. The person has adapted to the rule that was prevalent in history.

Originally the organisation of the selves was beneficial to cope with situations in daily life. But in life circumstances change and these selves stay fixated in their originally adaptive roles. So later in life, in other situations, with other people and other needs, the organisation of the selves can prevent you from adaptation. Mostly we are not aware of that.
In the practice of Voice Dialogue, what is called a facilitator, not a “therapist”, helps you to explore these different selves by asking these selves, one after another, simple questions.
The facilitator asks you to concentrate on a self and go into the energy of this particular self in a different place than where you started in the room. So both the facilitator and yourself know and experience that you talk from a different part. This emanating self is questioned.

Questions that are asked are like:
Nice to meet you, can you tell me your name?
How old are you?
How do you look like?
How do you feel at this moment?
How long are you with Jacob (the person who is facilitated is called Jacob)?
Do you remember when you came in the life of Jacob?
What happened then?
What are you caring for?
Do you have a difficult job?
Does Jacob know you are there?
Does he like you?
Does he accept your help?
Do you get space to do your job?
Do the other selves know you?
Do they collaborate with you?
What would happen in the life of Jacob if you weren’t there?
What would you like Jacob would improve in his life?
Etc

All these questions make perfectly clear what the function is of this specific self. It is an exiting experience when this self is questioned in such a respectfull way. The facilitator elaborates no pressure to change, just expresses her or his curiousity and wanting to acknowledge the presence and individuality of this particular self.
There are no bad or good selves. Although some can have a limiting impact on the life of a person, these selves don’t have all knowledge or capacities to exert in situation they don’t know. They selves are “designed” to prevent rejection or danger and are triggered by what they learned early in life. They’re doing the best they can.
During this questioning the facilitator engages with the particular self in an open and committed way. Compliments are exchanged. The presenting self is growing, becoming more open in an energetic way. The facilitator stays in his curious and acknowledging attitude.
The self experiences this acknowledgement and the facilitator stimulates reflection on its role in the life of the person. The self will express feelings and emotions, like a real person. Special attention is drawn to these emotions, what the self is feeling physically when this self is there. It is encouraged to be there, to express herself.
There will be no discussion, no opposing views from the side of the facilitator. The self is expressing without the limitations of its function or tasks. The energy builds up and after a while decreases. When the most urgent expressions have passed the facilitator asks if the self has some advice for the person, based on what is said. After that the facilitator thanks the self and asks the person to return to the original place where the person started.
Then the person, in this position, is asked to reflect on what happend and how it feels. Mostly people express surprise and that they now understand more about how this aspect of themselves works in daily life. They feel a little bit more distance and closeness together to this part. This self now has become a bit different to the person. In the future they can physically feel when this particular self is active.

Often, when a dominant self has presented itself in this way, a hidden or disowned self will pop up. The same procedure will be followed. Also the physical appearance of this side is very important to focus on, because that will be an anchor for the person to identify this self. When the disowned self will be able to express itself it means that it is no longer hidden and that the dominant and opposite self permitted this pushed away aspect of the person to come on stage. It enriches the person.
After such a repeated scenery, where different selves have presented themselves and the person has reflected on feelings and opnions, the person is asked to stand next to the facilitator who summarizes briefly in a neutral way what he saw and experienced himself.
This helps the person to become aware of the processes that played a role in the scenery. Mostly these facilitation processes have a great impact and automatically work through in daily life in a smooth way.
That is called transformation. The person will know and feel when a certain self is operating and wil learn to use it or to lessen its impact in daily life. This process of transformation is predicted and stimulated by the facilitator.

Usually such a session takes one and a half or two hours. Voice Dialogue isn’t repeated too frequently, because of the time these experiences take to ground in daily life. Transformation takes time. Mostly a few sessions are enough to give thorough transformation a chance.
So change is an aim but that is viewed as an autonomous process if the person gets aware of the selves that play important roles in their lives and if the awareness of the aspects that are pushed away, mostly beautifull qualities, increases.

What does this all have to do with the voices voice hearers hear?
These voices are not experienced as “ parts”! They are other people that speak to me, they have nothing to do with me! They can attack, they ruine my life. They forbid me things. I am afraid of them. They challenge everything I want. They tell me to do what I don’t want. They have full power of me! This “Voice Dialogue” is another therapeutic trick to convince me that my opinions are wrong. I want to get rid of my voices! They are my enemies.

You can’t deny that your voices are yours. You own them. You have a relationship with them. They came in your life at a difficult moment. There is no magical trick that you can get rid of them.You live with them. That is a reality. It is like a partner that will not disappear. You dislike him, but you can’t divorce. You didn’t ask for it. But it stays a pain in the ass. You want to fight it but it is too strong. So you better find ways that you can stand it, that you can improve your skills to relate to it.
In our experience voices want to be heard. To be listened to. They want to express themselves. Many voices are angry or even malevolent. Angry people want to vent their anger, to express why they are angry. Mostly anger connects to repression. You don’t get what you want. Angry people exaggerate. They were not able or permitted to express what they wanted. They were limited. Voices are ordinary people. They have feelings, motives, shortcomings, possibilities and opinions. They don’t use rational strategies but react out of frustrations.

An example from real life. Paul heard one voice. A very destructive voice. He told Paul to jump in front of the train. He commented all day on everything Paul did and thought. This voice was limiting Paul’s life extremely. Paul was very afraid of the voice. This voice was someone elses. Paul wanted it to disappear.
When the facilitator started to talk to this voice, he wasn’t nice. He expressed his anger and frustration with Paul. He told the facilitator that Paul deserved to die. He, Paul, was a whimp, the voice told. The voice was very frustrated with Paul who never stood up against injustice done to himself. Everybody played with Paul. He always, in every situation, stayed this anxious rabbit.
The voice told that he was angry at Paul all day. That had to be very tiring, the facilitator remarked. Indeed, the voice told he was fed up with this. He wanted Paul to be stronger but all his comments made Paul more anxious and avoiding. The facilitator mentioned that he understood the voice wanted Paul to become stronger. Was that correct? Yes, it was. Is the way you want to help Paul effective? No, Paul became weaker and weaker. When Paul becomes less anxious? If you support him, the voice said. Do you know how to do this? No. So the facilitator told about how he had learned to support anxious people. The voice was interested. Do you want to become his “Teacher”? Much less tiresome! This idea attracted the voice and from that time on he was changed from a destructive bullying voice to a supportive companion that tried to positively help him to express what he needed.
In the following sessions the facilitator helped the voice to improve his supportive qualities. Untill this day this voice didn’t return to his old nagging and criticizing attitude. Paul acquiered a true mate.

So in talking to the voices we essentially use the same non-judgemental attitude that is asked for in the Voice Dialogue practice. Of course we disagree with destructive attitudes! We don’t want people to being hurt.
But mostly there is ground for such an attitude, we want to explore these motives.
What happend in the life of the voice hearer that the voices appeared in such a negative way. We want to talk about what made the voice frustrated, we want to support the voice hearer to become more equal to the voices. We support the voice and the voice hearer they are both not happy in their entanglement. We aim at a better understanding between eachother and strive for improving the positive qualities of the voice hearer to cope better with life.

If there are positive voices too, we encourage support from them.

3. How does a session looks like?

The facilitator starts by asking the voice hearer how he and the the voices would feel about talking to them directly. She asks why the voice hearer and the voices find it a good idea or not.
The facilitator gives an extensive explanation about the method and its purposes. She informs the voice hearer that the voices need to agree to talk. If the voices don’t want than it is important to explain what the advantages can be.
The facilitator never forces the voice hearer or the voices to do this work.
All three parties: the facilitator, the voice hearer and the voices must agree and feel feel safe with it. If not we don’t do this kind of work. There are also other ways to work together and achieve a better relationship with the voices.
The facilitator gives examples of positive experiences with the method to stimulate the interest of voice hearer and voices. The facilitator acts as if she is talking to individual members of a continually present group, the whole group must give consent. Some voices don’t want and other do, then the facilitator asks what the consequenses can be.
The advantage we want to go for is that they understand each other better, that there will be a better relationship with the voices.
If the voice hearer wants to stay in control, the therapist can speak indirectly to the voices, asking questions that are formulated by the voice hearer as an interpreter. This can be a warming up or the only practice the voice hearer wants.

Before the start the facilitator initiates a discussion with the voice hearer about which voice he/she wants to speak first. Preferably start with a familiar but not too threatening one.

Then the facilitator asks the voice hearer to concentrate on the particular voice. When there is proper contact with this voice the voice hearer is asked to take another place in the room. The chair is placed there where the voice hearer thinks the voice is at the right distance, in the right position.
The facilitator welcomes the voice and tries to find a suitable attitude towards the prevalent voice that now has taken over the conversation.

Then the following questions will be asked:
Who are you? Do you have a name?
How old are you?
Does the voice hearer know you?
When did you come in the life of (name of voice hearer)?
(Directly adressing to the voice and talk about the person as another stimulates the voice to be present.)
What was the reason or your motive for you to come to (name)?
What were the circumstances at that time in the life of (name)?
What happened in the life of (name)?
What did you have to care for or do for (name) ?
What do you want to achieve for (name)?
What would happen with (name) if you would not be there?
How does (name of voice hearer) relates to you?
How is it to take care for (name)?
Would you like something to change in your relationship with (name)?

When these kind of questions are answered the facilitator thanks the voice for his explanations.
The common last question is:
is there anything you want to advice / suggest to (name)?

When the facilitator wants to finish the dialogue, she asks if the voice does not mind to close the talk and perhaps wants to have another talk another time. After the permission the facilitator greets the voice in the sense of saying goodbye to the voice, and can make another compliment.

We then return to the voice hearer in the beginning position. Back to the middle position.

The facilitator encourages reflecting on what happened. Often the voice hearer is surprised by what happened and starts to feel some distance to that particular voice.
The facilitator and voice hearer discuss how it feels having had this inetrview with the voice and what the voice hearer thinks about what the voice said. Probably another voice will come up. Then the same procedure is repeated, if the voice hearer wants this and dependent on the time that is left.

At closure the “Awareness” phase is initiated. The facilitator asks the voice hearer to stand next to her. Together viewing at the scene and the facilitator summarizes what she saw happening. Most voice hearers appreciate this. Thus they become (more) aware of the process that was going on. The facilitator is not judging what happened but merely tells what she saw.

The facilitator encourages the voice hearer to continue to make contact with the voices at home. And to think about other potentials for changing the relationship.
In advance questions to the voices for next session can be scheduled.

We trust that after such a process is initiated voice hearer and voices work things further out themselves. It is helpful to keep a diary of what happens. Sessions can also be summarized on paper afterwards by the voice hearer. Sometimes a voice hearer wants the session (video-) taped.

4. Attitudes

The voice-hearer is the owner.
At any moment the voice hearer can interfere in the ongoing process. The facilitator states that it is preferable (obligatory?) for the voice hearer not to disappear completely during the session. It is important to remember and to learn from it. He must stay in charge and take responsibility for that.

The facilitator is not the enemy of the voices.
In traditional psychiatry the approach that prevails is that one should get rid of the voices. You should not listen to the voices and distract yourself. The experience of voice hearing is often not positively acknowledged. Of course, it should be convenient that the voices’ influence on you will diminish. But sending them away is not our goal. Probably you come in a situation where the voice withdraw if they have “done their work”. If the underlying problem is solved.

Non-judgemental, relaxed:
Facilitators are trained not to judge, not to go in discussion with the voices. The facilitator won’t work with your voices if he is afraid of them. The facilitator must feel confident and relaxed, although it is an exiting endeavour to talk with voices.

The facilitator wants to get to know the voices.
The facilitator expresses curiousness in how you and the voices are doing together. Often the voices are not happy with the entanglement they are trapped in. The facilitator expresses empathy.

Respectful, but not submissive.
The facilitator has a respectful attitude towards what and who are presented. But they are firmly opposed to hurting someone. The facilitator wants to stimulate autonomy, not an obeying or destructive life style.

Match the energy of the voice.
The facilitator has some experience with her own selves. During facilitation she finds support from her selves that match best with the voice that is presented. E.g. when an anxious voice is in action, the facilitator seeks support from her own anxious selves, but stays in a neutral and aware attitude. In this way the contact with the voice can improve through empathy.

Assertive stance when challenging the voices, not argumentative.
The facilitator is capable of not being challenged into arguments. She stays firm but doesn’t take a moral standpoint.
Respect is the ethical principle.

5. When the Technique can be of Use

The technique will be particularly beneficial for those with prior experience of communicating with their voices.
Some voice hearers don’t know that they can communicate with their voices. They are too afraid for them or didn’t even think of the idea. Communication first has to become established, the facilitator can give advice. Some voice hearers can’t or don’t want to communicate with their voices. For those this method is not of use.
The person has to feel safe enough to do the exercise.
Again, the facilitator tries to help you at feeling at ease with this exciting and often new exercise. You stay in control, the facilitator focuses on that. You are responsible for staying present, the facilitator encourages it.
Time should be spent collaboratively with the voice-hearer for planning suitable questions to put to the voices.
It is fine if you know what you can expect. It is important that you plan what you want to achieve, that you express what your concerns are. What you want to learn or know.
The voice-hearer should be given the opportunity to use the chairs appropriately in response to what the voices have said; this may become easier over time.

6. When the Technique can be Dangerous

When the voice-hearer feels they may be unable to maintain control during the interview.
If the facilitator senses that, she asks you to return to the beginning position. She will not proceed with the talking to the voice. The importance of having some form of control is stressed. If you can’t stay in control the reasons ought to be discussed.
It is necessary that the voice hearer and the facilitator have confidence that the voice hearer can take over at any moment. If necessary the facilitator doesn’t proceed the talking to the voices untill both the voice hearer and the facilitator are convinced that control is possible next time. Other work should be done beforehand to pave the way.

If there is a poor understanding between the interviewer and the voice-hearer. If this is the case it should be put on the agenda immediately.
Doing this kind of work together demands proper understanding. Things that hinder understanding must be discussed and cleared, in order to be able to proceed. Both facilitator and voice hearer are equally responsible for that. The most hindering aspect on the side of the facilitator is when she aims too much in the direction of change.

When the interviewer responds inappropriately to the voices, in either tone or content.
This seems obvious, but if the facilitator isn’t aware (facilitators are human beings, not perfect) the voice hearer should mention that. If a voice expresses anger towards the facilitator it must be dealt with properly. Often there is a good reason for it and that needs to be explored.
The facilitator shouldn’t take remarks too personally.

When debriefing does not take place.
The voice hearer must leave the room at ease, debriefing is for checking that. If the influence of the voice is still too strong when time is up, time should be taken in order to make the voice hearer at ease.

When the chair is not clearly used.
Sometimes voices are competing with eachother in order to get space. The facilitator must pay attention to that, negotiate and set a proper agenda for all of them.

When talking to the voices becomes a goal in itself
Some voice hearers become so fascinated with this procedure that it becomes a game instead of a mean to achieve certain goal (e.g. autonomy, better relationship).

7. Goals

Exploration of the voices’ underlying motives.
To help the individual feel more detached from the voice-hearing experience.
Enhancing a more healthy dialogue.
Solving conflicts.
Gather information about the voices and the role they play in actual life and in the life history.
Discover what kind of action is required.
Start an internal process of change.

8. Examples

Karen is a 28 year old woman.
She had been in psychiatric hospital for 4 years. Most of the time in the seclusion room, to prevent her from hurting herself. The voices told her to do so. She was heavily medicated but it didn’t make the voices go away or diminish their impact on her. At a certain moment she decided not to hurt herself anymore. Then she could come out of the hospital and live on her own. She married. Although she lived independently the voices restricted her life. Almost all day they were talking to her. Criticising, commenting and telling her to hurt herself, which she didn’t. It costed Karen a lot of energy.
In the first interview it appeared that Karen heard four male voices. They all where negative towards her and her actions. Karen agreed that the facilitator talked to the voices.
The facilitator followed the above mentioned procedure. The voices subsequently vented their anger with Karen and all four told about the history of their relationship with Karen.
The story that came out was the following. The voices came in the life of Karen when she was approximately 4 years old. Karen was lonely and had experienced awfull things. The voices than supported Karen. They helped her to survive. As a child and adolescent she accepted the support of the voices. They had a good relationship with Karen.
When Karen was 20 years old she became member of a religious sect. She felt happy and safe in that community and at a certain moment she told about her voices. The other members of the sect expressed their opinion that the voices were instruments of the devil and urged Karen to get rid of these voices. A fight between Karen and the voices was initiated and the voices transformed in very negative ones.
This was the beginning of Karen’s journey in psychiatry.
The relational history that was depicted Karen had forgotten. She wasn’t aware anymore of what happened, so absorbed she was by the negativity of the voices. Nobody discussed the history of the voices with Karen. In the psychiatric clinic professionals were also trying to help Karen to get rid of the voices, which didn’t succeed.
Once the voices expressed their frustration it became obvious that their original intent was to support Karen. They expressed this frustration and Karen could grasp this. After the session Karen started intensive dialogues with the voices at home. In a more constructive way.
At the next session a month later two voices had disappeared.
Two voice dialogue sessions were enough to restore the relationship between Karen and her two remaining but now positive voices. It appeared that Karen developed to a autonomous person who wasn’t needing that much support anymore.
The voices disappeared and stayed away untill now, years later. Karen dared to taper down the medication. She wrote that she now hears only one supportive voice that she doesn’t want to leave and leads a happy life with almost no medication.
So the talking to the voices gave way to transformation of the voices back into the original supportive voices. At last Karen didn’t need them anymore and they could withdraw.

For more information about the voice dialogue method we recommend the following sites:
Institute for Transformational Psychology (Netherlands)
The objective of the Institute for is to bring Transformational Psychology to the attention of more people and to advance its use. To achieve these goals the ITP organises lectures, training’s, and an educational program. The methods and techniques the ITP uses are not a target in itself, but instruments to achieve awareness and integration of a number of important principles of transformation.

Voice Dialogue International
The website of the originators of Voice Dialogue, Hal and Sidra Stone. Voice Dialogue, Relationship, and the Psychology of Selves can be used by individuals for their own personal growth or by professionals in the fields of psychotherapy, counseling, personal coaching, and business and organizational consulting. Their psychospiritual approach to consciousness and transformation includes an in-depth study of the many selves or subpersonalities that make up the psyche, as well as work with dreams, archetypal bonding patterns, and body energy fields.