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Phoenix

Making Sense of Madness: An emancipatory approach

7 July 2017, 10 am – 4.30pm, registration from 9.30am

Hackney House, 25-27 Curtain Road, Hackney, London, EC2A 3LT

https://madness-london.eventbrite.co.uk

This unique, one day event, featuring Jacqui Dillon and Rai Waddingham (recently featured on BBC Horizon: Why Did I Go Mad?), explores experiences often dismissed as symptoms of serious mental illness: voices, visions, paranoia, unusual beliefs and altered states, and reframes them as understandable human responses to adversity.

Drawing from personal and professional experiences of madness, healing and recovery, combined with emerging innovative research findings, Jacqui and Rai present an emancipatory approach to understanding and working with distressing experiences that prioritises respect, personal meaning, self-determination and liberation.

Download: Making Sense of Madness Flyer

It includes:

  • Understanding ‘mad’ experiences
  • Exploring factors that can contribute to and shape distress
  • Alternatives to diagnosis – moving beyond the illness model
  • Respectful ways of helping people in distress
  • Strategies to survive and thrive

This day is suitable for:

  • Anyone interested in understanding more about madness, creativity and the complex spectrum of human experience
  • Those involved in supporting another human beinga – whether this is as a friend, ally, family member, colleague, mental health professional, teacher, therapist, social worker, voluntary sector worker, manager or spiritual advisor
  • All those with lived experience of madness and distress

Fees:

  • Unwaged: £10
  • Voluntary Sector & Self Funding: £90
  • Statutory & Commercial: £125

Please get in touch if you’re in a difficult financial position – we may be able to help.

Register:

https://madness-london.eventbrite.co.uk

Keynote Talk on Demedicalising Distress in Powys, September 2013

Watch my recent talk on Demedicalising Distress in Powys on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/JHzHliy5yeQ

The Powys Mental Health team invites you to a free conference they are organising in in Llandrindod Wells.

Shaping Services Together.

  • Should the question underpinning how we shape our mental health services be “what has happened to you” rather than “what is wrong with you”?  Main Speaker Jacqui Dillon.
  • Do you use or have you ever used mental health services or are you close  to someone who has?  Do you think that your experiences of mental  health services could help change how services are planned and  delivered?
  • Do you want to know how you, no matter what your age, might become more involved in shaping our mental health services nationally and locally?
  • Key decision makers coming. Do you have something to say about the welfare benefit system and the changes?

Everyone welcome, all you need is you to be interested in the questions above. We can provide free transport to you if you live in Powys.

Lunch and refreshments will be available.

Thursday, 19th September 2013, 10:15 a.m – 4:00 p.m. The Pavilion, Spa Road, Llandrindod Wells, Powys LD1 5EY

To Book or find out more call Glynis Luke on 01597 822 191 or email her at pamhinfo@pavo.org.uk or book online here This is your opportunity to debate and communicate directly with national and local decision makers about mental health services.

Our keynote speaker is Jacqui Dillon, writer, campaigner, international speaker and trainer.

English poster here and leaflet here.  Welsh poster here and leaflet here

This is one of three conferences across Wales funded and supported by Welsh Government and Public HealtH Wales.  The other two are:

  • Thurs 12th September in Rhyl called Measuring Up.  More here.
  • Wed 23rd October in Cardiff called Know Your Rights.  More here.

These events are part of the Stronger in Partnership initiative, you can find out more about Powys Stronger in Partnership here.

You can download some information about the event here and there is more on our blog here.

Booking for the event is now open – click here.

 

Hearing Voices Network Launches Debate on DSM 5 and Psychiatric Diagnoses

 

IT’S THE BAD THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO YOU THAT CAN DRIVE YOU CRAZY!

The Hearing Voices Network in England has issued a position statement on DSM 5 and the wide issue of psychiatric diagnoses following last week’s debate on the need for a new paradigm in mental health services, reported largely as a ‘turf war’ between psychiatry and psychology. Concerned that this debate can all too easily sound ‘academic’ and miss the voices of the very people these systems impact upon – those diagnosed with mental health problems – HVN are taking the debate back to the people.

We believe that people with lived experience of diagnosis must be at the heart of any discussions about alternatives to the current system.

Jacqui Dillon, Hearing Voices Network, Chair.

In their statement, the Hearing Voices Network (HVN) state that psychiatric diagnoses are both scientifically unsound and can have damaging consequences. HVN suggest that asking ‘what’s happened to you?’ is more useful than ‘what’s wrong with you?’.

Concerned that essential funds are being wasted on expensive and futile genetic research, they call for the redirection of funds to address the societal problems known to lead to mental health problems and provide the holistic support necessary for recovery.

This is part of a growing, international movement by survivors of the psychiatric system who are questioning the adequacy of a biomedical model to make sense of and respond to madness and distress (see: http://www.intervoiceonline.org/ http://www.mindfreedom.org/ http://psychdiagnosis.weebly.com/ http://www.madinamerica.com/ http://www.occupypsychiatry.net/ http://www.youtube.com/openparadigmproject )

HVN invites people with lived experience of diagnosis and their supporters to engage in a discussion about the issues and help plan a way forwards.

People who use services are the true experts on how those services could be developed and delivered; they are the ones that know exactly what they need, what works well and what improvements need to be made. This is not just an academic or professional issue – it’s one that affects our lives.”

Jacqui Dillon, Hearing Voices Network, Chair

 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes for the editor

 

  • The Hearing Voices Network (England) is a national, user-led charity that supports people who hear voices, see visions or have other unusual experiences. The Hearing Voices Network is part of the rapidly expanding global Hearing Voices Movement with 26 Hearing Voices Networks operating, across 5 continents. The Hearing Voices Network’s position statement can be read, and commented on, via their website http://www.hearing-voices.org/

 

 

Out Now: New Edition of Bestselling Book – Models of Madness

Models of Madness

Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis

Second Edition

Edited by John Read, University of Liverpool, UK

and Jacqui Dillon, National Chair, Hearing Voices Network, UK

 “Truly, a revolution is occuring in our understanding of severe mental illness…This volume will serve as an inspiration, not only to established clinicians and researchers, but to the young people who will develop better services for people with psychosis in the future.” 

– Prof Richard Bentall, From the Foreword.

 

The publication is very timely given the international debate about this month’s publication of DSM-5, the latest and most controversial version of psychiatry’s diagnostic ‘bible’. Our book documents all the evidence showing that these diagnoses are unscientific and a major cause of the stigma faced by people who receive these labels. It also presents the research demonstrating the urgent need for a fundamental paradigm shift towards evidence-based, effective and humane mental health services.”

– Prof John Read, Lead Editor

Are hallucinations and delusions really symptoms of an illness called ‘schizophrenia’? Are mental health problems really caused by chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions? Are psychiatric drugs as effective and safe as the drug companies claim? Is madness preventable?

This second edition of Models of Madness challenges the simplistic, pessimistic and often damaging theories and treatments of the ‘medical model’ of madness. Psychiatric diagnoses and medications are based on the false premise that human misery and distress are casued by chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions, and ignore the social causes of psychosis and what psychiatrists call ‘schizophrenia’. This edition updates the now extensive body of research showing that hallucinations and delusions etc. are best understood as reactions to adverse life events and that psychological and social approaches to helping are more effective and far safer than psychiatric drugs and electroshock treatment. A new final chapter discusses why such a damaging ideology has come to dominate mental health and, most importantly, how to change that.  

 Models of Madness is divided into three sections:

  1. Section One provides a history of madness, including examples of violence against the ‘mentally ill’, before critiquing the theories and treatments of contemporary biological psychiatry and documenting the corrupting influence of drug companies
  2. Section Two summarises the research showing that hallucinations, delusions etc. are primarily caused by adverse life events (eg. parental loss, bullying, abuse and neglect in childhood, poverty, etc.) and can be understood using psychological models ranging from cognitive to psychodynamic
  3. Section Three presents the evidence for a range of effective psychological and social approaches to treatment, from cognitive and family therapy to primary prevention.

This book brings together thirty-seven contributors from ten countries and a wide range of scientific disciplines. It provides an evidence-based, optimistic antidote to the pessimism of biological psychiatry.

Models of Madness will be essential reading for all involved in mental health, including service users, family members, service managers, policy makers, nurses, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, social workers, occupational therapists, and art therapists.

Download flyer to receive 20% discount from Routledge!

Models of Madness Flyer

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415579537/

 

 

The Hearing Voices Movement: Beyond Critiquing the Status Quo

Originally posted on: http://www.madinamerica.com/

I am thrilled to have been invited to write about the important and innovative work of the Hearing Voices Movement alongside so many eminent colleagues, critical thinkers and activists working together to bring about an essential revolution in the world of mental health.

We have just celebrated the anniversary of the rapidly expanding, global Hearing Voices Movement which was founded more than twenty-five years ago following the ground-breaking research of Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher. Romme and Escher have advocated for a radical shift in the way we understand the phenomenon of Hearing Voices; in contrast to traditional, biomedical psychiatry which views voices as an aberrant by-product of genetic, brain and cognitive faults, their research has firmly established that voices make sense when taking into account the traumatic circumstances that frequently provoke them (Romme and Escher, 1989, 2000, 2009, 2011). While ‘auditory hallucinations’ is the preferred jargon within psychiatric literature, the term ‘hearing voices’, which uses ordinary, non pathologising language framed subjectively, has been reclaimed. This is part of a wider aim within the mental health user movement to decolonise medicalised language of human experience.

Romme and Escher’s research shows that the majority of people who hear voices have had some traumatic experience which they connect with hearing voices.  Subsequent research has confirmed their findings and attests to what many of us with first-hand experience of madness have always known – bad things that happen to you can drive you crazy. However, despite the well-established link between hearing voices and traumatic life experiences, the Hearing Voices Movement explicitly accepts all explanations for hearing voices which may include an array of belief systems, including spiritual, religious, paranormal, technological, cultural, counter cultural, philosophical, medical, and so on. As well as this, we welcome people with a range of experiences, including people who see visions or have other unusual perceptions or sensations.

Within the Hearing Voices Network (HVN) in England which currently has the most well established national network, there are approximately 180 groups currently operating. Groups run mainly in the community but also within statutory and NGO sector services. These include acute psychiatric settings, adolescent services, low, medium and high secure settings. In addition a number of specialist groups for women, people from Black and minority ethnic communities, prisoners, children, young people and parents have also been established. As a respected British consultant psychiatrist recently said, “You clearly represent a movement and constituency that has gone well beyond offering a critique of the status quo and towards representing advocacy and example of alternative approaches which are increasingly being recognised as complimentary or better than traditional approaches”. (Roberts, 2013).

HVN creates sanctuary; safe spaces to share taboo experiences, where there are real possibilities for healing and growth. People are free to share and explore their experiences in detail including the content of what their voices say (Beavan and Read 2010), without the threat of censorship, loss of liberty or forced medication, a common feature of disclosure in traditional psychiatric settings.

As well as our group work, we raise awareness of the benefits of talking about voices, visions and other unusual experiences and the value of peer support. We promote this innovative approach to voice hearers, family members and mental health professionals. We regularly provide training to staff, support on-going research into hearing voices and allied subjects, and liaise with the media which has resulted in a number of positive broadcasts and publications about HVN and voice hearing, both nationally and internationally (Adams 2008; Dillon 2010a; Hilpern 2007; Kirsch 2007; Lakhani 2009: Smith 2007). 

There are now Hearing Voices networks in 26 countries, across 5 continents: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, USA and Wales. International developments are co-ordinated via INTERVOICE – the International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices – an international organisation dedicated to spreading positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices across the world.

Representatives and members of the international networks meet annually, at the World Hearing Voices Congresses, to promote new developments, innovative practice, translation of materials, and to support activities in burgeoning countries and share a sense of community, solidarity and camaraderie. One of the fundamental strengths of the Hearing Voices Movement, which has led to its extraordinary success, is that it is based on mutually respectful relationships – authentic partnerships between experts by experience and experts by profession, working together to bring about the emancipation of voice hearers.

HVN’s starting point is that the crises that people experience are real and that they are happening for a reason which is directly connected to the person’s life. We endeavour to support people to make sense of the real events in their lives that may have precipitated their crisis. We show a genuine interest in the range of people’s inner, subjective experiences. When people describe experiences that are deemed ‘psychotic’ we look for the meaning in their madness. Sometimes people use metaphorical or symbolic language to convey their realities and sometimes they are talking literally about things that have happened to them.  However crazy someone appears, we believe that they are making a meaningful attempt to survive maddening experiences.

Contrary to traditional approaches, HVN sees voice-hearing as significant, decipherable and intimately connected to a person’s life story. Consequently, we encourage and support people to listen to their voices and attest to their reality in order to better understand their meaning. We acknowledge that people are having normal reactions to abnormal stress. Instead of asking people – what is wrong with you? We ask them – what has happened to you? On a daily basis we hear stories of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, the impact of neglect, poverty and alienation, as well as of racism, sexism and classism.  Those people, whose experiences do not fit so neatly into a category of trauma as it is currently understood, raise the question of developing our understanding of the huge range of painful and damaging experiences that can be inflicted on and endured by children and adults.

We show respect for the reality of the suffering that people have experienced, and a keen awareness of how this may limit their expression of feelings, ability to think clearly, or capacity to connect. A key part of our role is to magnify the voices of people who are not normally listened to, by promoting the belief that each person has a deep wisdom and expertise about managing and dealing with their own problems. We validate and support people’s resilience, creativity, stamina and emotional strengths, even when they themselves doubt the existence of these qualities.

Acknowledgment enables people to develop true insight into their own distress and suffering which leads to an increasing sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. We are interested in people’s subjective experiences – including their altered states of consciousness, unusual perceptions, ideas and ways of seeing and experiencing the world. When your own feelings, thoughts, experiences and bodily sensations, begin to make sense to you, insight is a natural consequence. When you understand your own ‘symptoms’ as meaningful and essential survival strategies, a more respectful and loving acceptance of yourself begins to emerge (Bullimore 2009; Dillon 2010b; Lampshire 2009; Longden 2010; McNamara 2011).

We recognise that recovery is an on-going process with no fixed end point and that each person’s recovery is unique. HVN recognises that crises may occur again because recovery is an evolving process, an expansive process not a reductive one which seeks to control and maintain people. We have faith in people’s inherent right and capacity to heal, to make mistakes, to learn and to grow. We know that there is much about human experience that we do not understand and we remain humble and curious and open to new ways of seeing the world. We are not interested in complying with social control or in servicing normality. ‘Instead of being a list of symptoms, with side effects on top, we are people who hear voices and see visions, have unusual thoughts, passionate feelings, intense experiences’(Dillon and May 2002). We celebrate our differences.

For many voice hearers and psychiatric survivors, active participation and social action supports and enhances the recovery process; having a shared survivor mission ( Herman, 1992), and becoming part of a collective voice creating change in the world, both inside and out,  is healing, empowering and liberating. This is also true for many mental health workers, who have become increasingly disillusioned with an inadequate biomedical model, disturbed by the collusion demanded of staff in a mental health system driven by fear, control and bureaucracy. For them, becoming part of the Hearing Voices Movement also enables a recovery of meaning, purpose and optimism, a renewal of important values, a rediscovering of a sense of self. For all of us, the possibility of reconnecting to ourselves and each other as unique and equal human beings, is life affirming.

Questions, comments and/or reflections are welcome on this website or via Twitter @JacquiDillon

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Intervoice – http://www.intervoiceonline.org/

Hearing Voices Network, USA: http://www.hearingvoicesusa.org/

Hearing Voices Network, England: http://www.hearing-voices.org/

References:

Adams, W. (2008). The Listening Cure. Time, 21 February.

Beavan, V. and Read, J. (2010). Hearing voices and listening to what they say. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 198: 201-5.

Bullimore, P. (2009). My personal experience of paranoia. Psychosis 2: 173-7.

Dillon, J. and May, R. (2002). Reclaiming experience. Clinical Psychology 17: 25-77.Dillon,

J. (2010a). www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/20100414

Dillon, J. (2010b). The tale of an ordinary little girl. Psychosis 1: 79-83.

Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and recovery. New York: Basic Books.

Hilpern, K. (2007). How I beat the voices in my head. The Independent,  Mar. 6.

Kirsch, M. (2007). Voices in your head? You may not be crazy. The Times, 23 January.

Roberts, G. (2013). Personal communication.

Lakhani, N. (2009). A first-class recovery. Independent on Sunday, 25 October.

Lampshire, D. (2009). Lies and lessons: ramblings of an alleged mad woman. Psychosis 1: 178-84.Romme, M. and Escher, S. (1989). Hearing voices. Schizophrenia Bulletin 15: 209-16.

Longden, E. (2010). Making sense of voices: a personal story of recovery. Psychosis 2: 255-9.

McNamara, J. (2011). Can we sit and talk? Poems stories and some words of advice. Psychosis 3: 167-71.

Romme, M. and Escher, S. (1989). Hearing voices. Schizophrenia Bulletin 15: 209-16.

Romme, M. and Escher, S. (2000). Making Sense of Voices. London: Mind.

Romme, M. Escher, S. Dillon, J. Corstens, D. Morris, M. (eds.). (2009). Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery. PCCS Books.

Romme, M. and Escher, S. (eds) (2011). Psychosis as a Personal Crisis. London: Routledge.

Smith, D. (2007). Can you live with the voices in your head? New York Times, 25 March.

Trauma, Dissociation, Attachment & Neuroscience: A new paradigm for understanding severe mental distress

Special Edition: Complex reactions to severe trauma

The paper by Dillon, Johnstone & Longden in this volume (Trauma, Dissociation, Attachment and Neuroscience) brings together evidence from the neuroscience and mental health literature with the hope that this might lead to a paradigm shift in the way that people are seen and helped. Hopefully they are right, and biopsychosocial models worthy of the name may come to dominate practice, rather than models that sometimes masquerade as biopsychosocial but which are basically ‘bio-bio-bio models’, with social and psychological factors reduced to mere events that trigger an underlying genetic illness (Read, Bentall & Fosse, 2009).

JCPCP is a peer-reviewed journal which values personal experience above professional boundaries and doctrinal jargon. It provides a forum for ideas, experience and views of people working in the psychological world and those who use psychotherapy or receive psychiatric services. The journal encourages a critical, reflexive view of psychology and counselling and is a constant challenge to orthodoxy. Our contributors reflect on their work and experiences in therapy, in relationships and in institutions. The journal embraces philosophical, radical and scientific perspectives in its analysis of psychological, psychiatric and psychotherapeutic systems. With a following wind, it will sometimes make you laugh out loud.

 

New Foreign Correspondent for Mad in America

I am thrilled to have been invited to become a foreign correspondent for the Mad in America web site – see: http://www.madinamerica.com/

I will be writing about the important and innovative work of the Hearing Voices Movement alongside many eminent colleagues, critical thinkers and activists working together to bring about an essential revolution in the world of mental health.

You can read my first post here: http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/01/the-hearing-voices-movement-beyond-critiquing-the-status-quo/

About Mad in America:

The site is designed to serve as a resource and a community for those interested in rethinking psychiatric care in the United States and abroad. We want to provide readers with news, stories of recovery, access to source documents, and the informed writings of bloggers that will further this enterprise.

The bloggers on this site include people with lived experience, peer specialists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, program managers, social activists, attorneys, and journalists. While their opinions naturally vary, they share a belief that our current system of psychiatric care needs to be vastly improved, and, many would argue, transformed.

We also want to provide readers with the opportunity to add their voices to this discussion. We encourage readers to leave comments (see comment policy below), and to submit recovery stories and op-ed submissions. We encourage our readers to visit our forums to further this communal discussion.

Finally, we are commissioning original journalism, both in video and print, that explore on-going efforts to remake care in the U.S. and abroad, and also investigate the problems and deficiencies with the current drug-based paradigm of care.

We welcome feedback and comments on how we can improve this website, and continue to build an online community that can be a societal force for change.

Our Legal Organization

When we started this initiative, we investigated whether it would be better to operate as a non-profit organization, or as a C corporation. We chose the latter, as it provided us with a quicker and easier way to obtain initial funding from “investors” for creating the website and supporting its development. The president of the C Corp is Robert Whitaker. The other board members are Louisa Putnam, Kermit Cole, Laura Delano, and Matthew Cohen.

For on-going revenue to sustain this initiative, we are entirely dependent on support from our readers. We do not host advertisements and do not sell data about our readers to anyone.

Policy for Posting Comments

Please see our guidelines for posting comments on this site.

Support

Mad In America is supported entirely by user donations. Please click here to join in support of our mission.

Exciting new Hearing Voices Research & Development Fund in USA

Hearing Voices Research & Development Fund

http://femhc.org/Giving.aspx#Hearing_Voices_Research__Development_Fund

The Hearing Voices Research and Development Fund has been established to advance the development of the Hearing Voices Approach in the U.S. The Project was created by Gail A. Hornstein, Professor of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College, and Jacqui Dillon, National Chair of the Hearing Voices Network in England, who have been working together for 10 years to bring new approaches to understanding and coping with voice hearing.

Background
People who hear voices, see visions, or experience other extreme states often end up being diagnosed as psychotic (usually with schizophrenia) and a poor prognosis. The medications which have routinely been prescribed for such patients since the 1950s are effective for some but not for others, and even when they do work, their benefits typically diminish over time, while destructive physical and psychological side effects become increasingly problematic. Hearing voices in particular remains a challenge for many, many patients even after they have been tried on every possible medication over many years, and continues to be seen by many psychiatrists as a “treatment-resistant” symptom.

Hearing Voices Approach
For the past 25 years, the Hearing Voices Network – an international collaboration of professionals, people with lived experience, and their families and friends – has been working to develop an alternative approach to coping with voices, visions, and other extreme states that is empowering and useful and does not start from the assumption that people who have these experiences suffer from a chronic illness. A large body of research data, published in major professional journals, now provides support for key aspects of this approach (see references below), and the hundreds of peer-support groups that have developed in 20 countries around the world are enabling voice hearers – even those who have been chronically disabled – to learn to cope more effectively or rid themselves of the negative effects of their voices. These groups are now starting to spread across the US, but the lack of a systematic program for training potential facilitators and others interested in incorporating HVN’s work into their research or teaching is holding the United States back from being able to offer this effective, community-based psychosocial alternative to the current risky practice of large-dose, long-term treatment with (usually multiple) medications.

Hearing voices peer-support groups offer a safe place for people to share their experiences of voices, visions, tactile sensations and other unusual experiences and perceptions. People meet together to help and support each other, to exchange information, and to learn from one another’s coping strategies. Groups also offer an opportunity for people to accept and “live with voices” in a way that enables them to regain some control over their lives.

The situation in the US stands in striking contrast to that of other countries. For example, England (a country with a population of 60 million) has 180 hearing voices groups, and Denmark (a country of 5 million) has several dozen, whereas the US, with its population of over 300 million, currently has only about 15. The fund will support the development of HVN groups across the US by providing a systematic program of training that will create a network of hearing voices peer-support groups in key centers in each region of the country. Participants will be selected using a rigorous model in which mental health professionals and voice hearers collaborate in an intensive shared learning experience that equips them to apply HVN’s concepts and methods to the creation of positive alternatives for people diagnosed with psychosis.

Hearing Voices Research
The fund will also support a research study to provide the kinds of basic phenomenological descriptions of the voice hearing experience that have become increasingly essential to other research in this area.

Even though more and more researchers have become interested in investigating the complexities of voice hearing in and of itself (as opposed to treating it simply as one of a number of so-called “positive symptoms” of schizophrenia), the lack of a clear identification of the defining characteristics and significance of the experience for voice hearers makes it difficult to compare results across different studies. In addition, as colleagues from HVN have highlighted in their work (see references below), there is no evidence for the standard assumption that patients who hallucinate cannot articulate the triggers, contextual variability, or meaning of their experiences. The few phenomenological studies that have been conducted thus far demonstrate clearly that understanding the subjective experience of voice hearers themselves is essential to the ultimate effectiveness of any intervention designed to help them.

The Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care

We are a group of scientists, psychiatrists, researchers, public policy analysts, users and providers of mental health services, philanthropists, and community members that formed The Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care to find and promote the best ways to achieve long-term recovery and help people with mental health challenges to thrive.

The Foundation was established in response to nationwide interest in Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, and the desire to examine existing research, create support for new innovative research and programs, and sponsor symposia to build a new paradigm of care that focuses on long-term recovery and wellness. 

Strong evidence demonstrates that our 25-year long over-reliance on a purely medical model has not advanced mental health recovery. The number of individuals diagnosed with “chronic mental illness”, disabling enough to place them on the Social Security roles has tripled since 1987.

The Foundation has established a Scientific Advisory Committee and Community Advisory Committee to guide our activities of mental health reform.

For More Information:
www.hearing-voices.org
www.intervoiceonline.org
www.hearingvoicesusa.org
www.gailhornstein.com
www.jacquidillon.org

Selected References
Beavan, V. (2011). Towards a definition of “hearing voices”: A phenomenological approach. Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches, 3, 63-73.

Dillon, J. (2006, November). Collective voices. Open Mind.

Dillon, J. and E. Longden (2012) Hearing voices groups: Creating safe spaces to share taboo experiences. In M. Romme and S. Escher (eds.), Psychosis as a personal crisis: An experience-based approach. London: Routledge.

Honig, A., M. Romme, B. Ensink, S. Escher, M. Pennings and M. Devries (1998). Auditory hallucinations: A comparison between patients and non-patients. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 186, 646-651.

Hornstein, G.A. (2009). Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness. New York: Rodale Books. (UK edition, with a new introduction, PCCS Books, 2012)

Johns, L.C., J. Y. Nazroo, P. Bebbington and E. Kuipers (2002). Occurrence of hallucinatory experiences in a community sample and ethnic variations. British Journal of Psychiatry, 180, 174-78.

Lakeman, R. (2002). Making sense of the voices. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 38, 523-531.

Martin, P.J. (2000). Hearing voices and listening to those that hear them. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 7, 135-141.

Romme, M. and S. Escher (1989). Hearing voices. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 15, no. 2, 209-216.

Romme, M. and S. Escher (eds.). (1993; 2nd ed. 1998). Accepting Voices. London: MIND Publications.

Romme, M. and S. Escher (1996). Empowering people who hear voices. In G. Haddock and P. Slade (eds.), Cognitive Behavioral Interventions with Psychotic Disorders. London: Routledge, pp.137-150.

Romme, M. and S. Escher (2000). Making Sense of Voices: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals Working with Voice-Hearers. London: MIND Publications.

Romme, M. and S. Escher (2005). Trauma and hearing voices. In W. Larkin and A. Morrison (eds.) Trauma and Psychosis: New Directions for Theory and Therapy. London: Routledge.

Romme, M., S. Escher, J. Dillon, D. Corstens and M. Morris (eds.). (2009). Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery. Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books.

Romme, M., A. Honig, E.O. Noorthoorn and S. Escher (1992). Coping with voices: An emancipatory approach. British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 99-103.

Sayer, J., S. Ritter and K. Gournay (2000). Beliefs about voices and their effects on coping strategies. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 31, 1199-1205.