Jacqui Dillon on RTE.ie Radio 1 talking about Hearing Voices

What do you hear when you stop and listen to what’s going on in your head? A song that was on the radio yesterday? A snippet of this mornings conversation with your sister? Or nothing….? Are you debating the best route to take home? Are you saying a prayer? What does that sound like?

Jacqui Dillon hears voices. In her head. Lots of them.Voices that sound as real as you or me. Voices that wake her up. Voices that tell her to go to sleep. Voices that disagree with her, and voices that encourage her. And the voices have been there for as long as she can remember.So you might think Jacqui is mad, but this is the story of a woman who has come a long way with the voices in her head.

Twenty years ago Jaqqui’s experience of her voices drove her to psychiatric services…. and that’s where the story really begins because it was when she was told that the voices weren’t real, and that she was lying about her past that she really began to get mad. And that’s when Jacqui realised she had to learn to live with her voices and understand why they were there.

This is a story about hearing voices and about learning to live with them. A story about how your past shapes your future until you start to understand it .

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to hear voices, or have always thought that people who hear voices are plain mad, this documentary just might make you think twice.

Jacqui Dillon is the national Chair of the Hearing Voices Network in England. She is Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London.

Narrated and produced by Leeanne O’Donnell

Production Supervision by Liam O’Brien

Click here for more information on Hearing Voices Network

Click here for more information on Jacqui Dillon

First Broadcast December 7th 2013

‘Documentary on One is the home of Irish radio documentaries and the largest library of documentary podcasts available anywhere in the world. We tell stories in sound, mostly Irish ones, and each documentary tells its own story’

Listen:

You can listen here: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio-documentary-sounds-mad-hearing-voices-psychology.html

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.

 

Treatment Gap: The Truth about Mental Health

If you habbc_world_serviceve a mental health problem, where you live in the world makes a big  difference to the care you receive. In many lower and middle income countries,  three-quarters of people with mental health problems don’t have access to  mainstream mental health services. Even in wealthier, developed countries, the figure is close to 50%.

Claudia Hammond investigates some of the alternatives that occupy this ‘treatment gap’.

Psychiatrist Dr Monique Mutheru is one of just 25 psychiatrists in Kenya. In the absence of services to  meet the mental health needs of Kenyans, traditional healers and witchdoctors  play a crucial role in diagnosing and treating them. Claudia examines a programme which brings health workers and traditional healers together. It provides training for traditional healers to refer their severely ill patients to the clinic and avoid harmful practices that some healers carry out, such as lobotomy and bloodletting.

Even in developed countries like the United Kingdom, where mental health services are freely available, some people with mental health problems feel that the treatments do not help. The Hearing Voices Network provides support to ‘voice hearers’, through support groups, helping them to manage and engage with the voices that trouble them.

You can listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b35lq

A presentation by Jacqui Dillon at Carina Håkansson’s Family Care Conference in Sweden from Mad In America

BAD THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO YOU CAN DRIVE YOU CRAZY

Jacqui Dillon, the national chair of the Hearing Voices Network in England, discusses the work of the Hearing Voices Movement at the recent conference  ‘Presence and Participation: Arguments for the Humanistic and Sustainable Work We Do’ hosted by Carina Håkansson’s Family Care Foundation in Sweden (25-27 April 2013). To listen to Jacqui’s presentation, please click here.

The full conference proceedings are available via live streaming video on MadinAmerica.com.

Watch Keynote Presentation The Personal is Political Online

 
 
 
 
 
 

Here is a link to my recent presentation ‘The Personal is the Political’ which was filmed at the Critical Perspectives and Creative Responses to Experiences of Trauma and Distress Conference at University College Cork, Ireland:

http://panopto.ucc.ie/Panopto/Pages/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=45a4bb2c-6001-4a66-b5f1-bdec5e120f0e

This was a fantastic free event, attended by over 450 people over two days was organised by the School of Nursing & Midwifery & School of Applied Social Studies:

http://www.ucc.ie/en/nursingmidwifery/OurConferences/Title-175942-en.html 

and Critical Voices Network Ireland. See: http://www.criticalvoicesnetwork.com/ 

 

 

Mental Health Campaigners Welcome New Book About Schizophrenia

Published in The Guardian, 5th July 2011.

Mental health campaigners welcome book about schizophrenia.

The letters, journals and scribbled observations of David, diagnosed with schizophrenia, have been collated for a new book.

By Mary O’Hara

Schizophrenia is perhaps the most widely misunderstood and misrepresented of all serious mental illnesses in popular culture and media. So, when first-person accounts offering insights into the experience of someone who has lived with schizophrenia come along, they tend to be welcomed by mental health campaigners as an antidote to misinformation. Such has been the case with David’s Box, a new book documenting the journals and letters of a young man diagnosed with the illness in 1964 who took his own life seven years later.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/05/schizophrenia-journals-davids-box

There Is A Fault In Reality Film

Directed By: Tom Cotton, 2010, Tigerlily Films

Roughly 1% of people in the UK suffer from something called ‘schizophrenia’, yet there is little agreement about what this represents, what causes it, or how best to treat it. Despite the thousands of research studies carried out, if you’ve been diagnosed with this ‘disease of reality’, it is extremely unlikely that anyone will have asked you about your experiences – these are not considered scientifically meaningful. All these contradictions pose an important question: if ‘schizophrenia’ represents a fault in reality, with whom does this fault lie?

In There is a Fault in Reality, writer, director and psychotherapist Tom Cotton explores the stories of three people – Jon, Peter and Jacqui, who’ve all battled with the diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’ in different ways, and with varying outcomes. Through them, we enter a detailed insider’s view of ‘schizophrenia’, which bears little resemblance to what we think we know. As their stories unfold, the voices they hear are revealed to have clear meanings, and to have identities that are anything but ‘mad.’

 ‘A moving and informative film about ‘schizophrenia’ – real stigma buster.’ Professor Richard Bentall, Award winning author of Madness Explained and Doctoring the Mind

‘This is one of the most important films ever made about psychosis.’ Professor John Read, award winning researcher and co-author of Models of Madness, and Prejudice and Schizophrenia.

Available to buy from : http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/there-is-a-fault-in-reality-a-film-by-tom-cotton/#.UYpmEOBFtbw 

Free download available from SnagTV if you’re based in America: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/do_not_adjust_your_mind_there_is_a_fault_in_reality

Radio New Zealand (2010)

Interviewed by: Kathryn Ryan, 14 April 2010 on the Nine till Noon show

Radio New Zealand Jacqui

Jacqui Dillon is a guest speaker at a conference in Wellington this week and in Auckland next week at the Making Sense of Psychosis conference, held by Auckland University and organized jointly by the NZ branch of the International Society for the Psychological Treatments of Schizophrenia and the NZ Hearing Voices Network. (duration: 17′23″)

See: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/20100414