The Hearing Voices Network – “The Freedom to Hear Voices”: The Hearing Voices Movement

Psychology, Mental Health and Distress is a groundbreaking new text from John Cromby, David Harper and Paula Reavey. Whereas other texts are structured by diagnostic categories and are biologically reductive, this book places biology as well as the experience of distress itself in its social, cultural and historical context.

 Key Features:

  • Offers a wealth of case stories to portray the reality of living with distress and stimulate class discussion 
  • Fully informed by current experimental, qualitative and theoretical psychological research including research into hearing voices
  • Includes a chapter authored by those with first-hand experience of mental health services, ensuring your students understand the nuances of this emotionally charged and often controversial topic

Features additional contributions by renowned figures including Professor Richard Bentall, Professor John Read, psychiatrist and researcher Joanna Moncreiff and campaigner and Chair of the Hearing Voices Network, Jacqui Dillon among others.

See link for further information: http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=280329

Download flyer: CrombyHarper&Reaveyflyer

 

Hearing Voices Groups: Creating Safe Spaces to Share Taboo Experiences

 

Psychosis as a Personal Crisis seeks to challenge the way people who hear voices are both viewed and treated. This book emphasises the individual variation between people who suffer from psychosis and puts forward the idea that hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness.

In this book the editors bring together an international range of expert contributors, who in their daily work, their research or their personal acquaintance, focus on the personal experience of psychosis.

Further topics of discussion include:

  • accepting and making sense of hearing voices
  • the relation between trauma and paranoia
  • the limitations of contemporary psychiatry
  • the process of recovery.

This book will be essential reading for all mental health professionals, in particular those wanting to learn more about the development of the hearing voices movement and applying these ideas to better understanding those in the voice hearing community.

 

Demedicalising Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology and the Human Condition.

Demedicalising Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology and the Human Condition. Co-edited with Mark Rapley  and Joanna Moncrieff. Published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Thomas Szasz (1960) suggested that the myth of ‘mental illness’ functions to ‘render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflict in human relations’. The medicalization of distress enables the mental health professions to manage the human suffering that they are confronted with, and also the suspicion that there is little that they can do to help. But the medicalization of misery and madness renders people unable to comprehend their experiences in ordinary, meaningful terms. In this collection we restore to everyday discourse a way of understanding distress that, unlike contemporary psychiatry and psychology, recognises and respects the essential humanness of the human condition. De-medicalizing Misery is a shorthand term for this project. The book resists the psychiatrization and psychologization of human experience, and seeks to place what are essentially moral and political – not medical – matters back at the centre of our understanding of human suffering.

Notes on Contributors
Preface; R.Dallos
Carving Nature at its Joints? DSM and the Medicalization of Everyday Life; M.Rapley, J.Moncrieff & J.Dillon
Dualisms and the Myth of Mental Illness; P.Thomas & P.Bracken
Making the World Go Away, and How Psychology and Psychiatry Benefit; M.Boyle
Cultural Diversity and Racism: An Historical Perspective; S.Fernando
The Social Context of Paranoia; D.J.Harper
From ‘Bad Character’ to BPD: The Medicalization of ‘Personality Disorder’; J.Bourne
Medicalizing Masculinity; S.Timimi
Can Traumatic Events Traumatise People? Trauma, Madness and ‘Psychosis’; L.Johnstone
Children Who Witness Violence at Home; A.Vetere
Discourses of Acceptance and Resistance: Speaking Out About Psychiatry; E.Speed
The Personal Is the Political; J.Dillon
‘I’m Just, You Know, Joe Bloggs’: The Management of Parental Responsibility for First-Episode Psychosis; C.Coulter & M.Rapley
The Myth of the Antidepressant: An Historical Analysis; J.Moncrieff
Antidepressants and the Placebo Response; I.Kirsch
Why Were Doctors so Slow to Recognise Antidepressant Discontinuation Problems?; D.Double
Toxic Psychology; C.Newnes
Psychotherapy: Illusion With No Future?; D.Smail
The Psychologization of Torture; N.Patel
What Is To Be Done?; J.Moncrieff, J.Dillon & M.Rapley
Figure: Papers Using Term ‘Antidepressant’ On Medline 1957-1965
Index

‘Despite longstanding awareness of the limitations of the medical model when applied to difficulties of human behavior and adjustment, the fields of psychiatry and psychology continue to accede to the pressures of medicine and the drug industry in their conceptualization of these human realities. Ironically, however, this medical model, eager as it is to fit so much of people’s experience into diagnostic categories, is a social construction. This book represents a significant effort to de-mystify, de-medicalize, and reclaim important aspects of the human condition.’ – Kenneth D. Keith, Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of San Diego, USA

 

De-Medicalizing Misery has assembled an impressive cast of leading mental health experts. Together they challenge the simplistic and pessimistic biological model of human distress that has, with eager support from the pharmaceutical industry, dominated the mental health field for far too long. This evidence-based, humane and optimistic book not only explains where biological psychiatry went wrong, it spells out the alternatives.’ – John Read, University of Auckland, New Zealand and Editor of ‘Models of Madness’

 

  ‘The psychiatrist or psychologist is expected to do something for every patient sitting in front of him or her, but how robust is the intellectual basis of psychiatric science when psychiatric ‘diseases’ are merely symptom clusters – clustered by us, not by nature? We are in indeed in the age of the medicalization of everyday life, when Lord Layard, economist and architect of the IAPT programme, can write in the BMJ that ‘mental illness’ has taken over from unemployment as our greatest social problem. But what is the test of ‘mental illness’? In DeMedicalizing Misery the authors examine some of the domains lamentably absent from orthodox psychiatry and psychology training programmes, with their medical model focus, and in so doing raise the IQ of the whole debate. And not just for clinicians.’ – Dr Derek Summerfield, Consultant Psychiatrist & Senior Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, UK.
 

Authors: MARK RAPLEY is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, UK. He is the author of The Social Construction of Intellectual Disability, Quality of Life Research and, with Susan Hansen and Alec McHoul, Beyond Help: A Consumers’ Guide to Psychology.
 
JOANNA MONCRIEFF is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mental Health Sciences at University College London, UK and a Practising Consultant Psychiatrist at the North East London Foundation Trust. She has spent her academic career re-evaluating the nature and efficacy of psychiatric drugs and exploring the history and politics of psychiatry. She is the co-chair of the Critical Psychiatry Network, and has campaigned against the dominance of the biomedical approach to psychiatry, the extension of psychiatric coercion and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, in alliance with service user groups. She is the author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure (Palgrave Macmillan), A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs, and numerous papers and book chapters.
 
JACQUI DILLON is the National Chair of the Hearing Voices Network, UK, and a Director of Intervoice – the International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices. She is a campaigner, international speaker and trainer specialising in hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation and trauma. She is the co-editor of Living with Voices: An Anthology of 50 Voice Hearers’ Stories of Recovery. She has published numerous articles and papers, is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches and is a member of the collective for Asylum, The Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry.


She gives us all deep insights, courage, and powerful ideas.

We have been gifted to have Jacqui deliver training for us in Melbourne, Australia, and look forward to her third installment in May this year.

Jacqui’s messages continue to resonate here in Australia, and we are so happy to see more and more mental health workers willing to work with the impacts of trauma.

People who have attended Jacqui’s training tell us frequently how deeply it has affected them, and how much they have learnt, and changed, as a result. She gives us all deep insights, courage, and powerful ideas.

Don’t stop this important work Jacqui – your gifts are immeasurable!

Indigo Daya, Project Manager, Voices Vic, Melbourne, Australia.

Foreword to David’s Box: The journal and letters of a young man diagnosed as schizophrenic, 1960-1971.

A positive piece published in the Guardian, 5th July 2011 by Mary O’Hara about this important new book – David’s Box: The journal and letters of a young man diagnosed as schizophrenic, 1960-1971, for which I have written a foreward.

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

Bad Things That Happen to You Can Drive You Crazy!

I’m feeling elated after an amazing evening at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The event, sponsored by Mount Holyoke College Department of Psychology and Education, the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, and the Freedom Center was attended by about 150 people  – students, academics and people from the local community – some as far away as Boston, Connecticut and Pittsburg. The auditorium was packed with people hungry for an alternative to the pharmaceutically driven, biomedical model which dominates so heavily in America.  Many were inspired when they heard Ron Coleman and Paul Baker speak late last year and there is a growing momentum for the development of the Hearing Voices Network in America. Change is happening.

My talk, entitled: “Bad Things That Happen to You Can Drive You Crazy! Understanding Abuse, Trauma, and Madness and Working toward Recovery”,

(see this link for further information: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/stories/5682743)

seemed to really resonate with others experiences and many people were clearly questioning the adequacy of a biomedical model to make sense of and respond to human distress.

I began by reading ‘A Tale of An Ordinary Little Girl’ and then spoke about the groundbreaking work of the Hearing Voices Movement, its success in many other parts of the world and our intention to revolutionise the way societies think about hearing voices and other unusual human experiences. I ended by stressing the imperative to take collective responsibility for the ills in our societies, to become aware of the dominant ideologies that redefine reality and to challenge oppression, power, social norms and inequalities. I appealed to everyone to join the last great civil rights movement – fighting for the rights of those labelled as mentally ill.

As always, a number of survivors came up to me afterwards and thanked me for telling ‘their’ story. Lots of people wanted to find out more about how they could get involved in the movement, meet with others, start groups. People are impatient for a paradigm shift in the way we understand and respond to human suffering which is now, long overdue. Many are in anguish. Fortunately, there are already some fantastic Hearing Voices Groups running in the area, with several new groups in development. I left feeling proud, inspired and grateful to be part of such a wonderful, powerful movement for change in the world.

There is still so much work to be done. First, it’s time for a bath and then bed.

Transforming pain and loss into a force for good

I have had the pleasure of hearing Jacqui speak on numerous occasions, and – once – the honour of running a training programme with her, for 100 psychiatrists – on when and how to take abuse histories. Jacqui is a remarkable person who knows how to harness pain and loss and transform it into a force for good.

I can unreservedly recommend her to anyone considering running a mental health training or education event. You will be inspired and informed at the same time.

Professor John Read, Psychology Department, University of Auckland.

She is able to touch the heart of things.

Talking once about our dreams for Intervoice, Jacqui simply said: “Change the world”. When you hear this from her mouth you can tell from the tone she means it. A split second, just before her familiar contagious laugh, her eyes had a determination like a winning athlete in a marathon run. This is not only about a dream, but a personal attitude. One with many perspectives.

During the years I have witnessed many workshops and lectures from Jacqui. They repeatedly evoked a kind of another state of mind. She is really able to transform the political to the personal. Everytime I felt touched and taken. In most audiences I heard people tell me: “I want to stand up like her”. She motivates others to make the personal political. To speak out. She uses her constructive anger to push even the most hard-boiled egg to humanity. Politely but determined she is able to break down certain explicit and implicit practices of traditional psychiatry. Jacqui opens our eyes for what we know but don’t like to see. She is able to touch the heart of things. Her voice inspires to care.

 Dirk Corstens, Intervoice Chair, Psychiatrist