Posts

Psychosis Journal Cover

Hearing Voices Peer Support Groups: A Powerful Alternative for People in Distress

Psychosis Journal CoverABSTRACT:

Hearing voices peer support groups offer a powerful alternative to mainstream psychiatric approaches for understanding and coping with states typically diagnosed as “hallucination”.  In this jointly authored first-person account, we distill what we have learned from 10 years of facilitating and training others to facilitate these groups and what enables them to work most effectively in the long term. Having witnessed the transformative power of these groups for people long considered unreachable as well as for those who receive some benefit from standard psychiatric treatment, we describe effects that cannot easily be quantified or studied within traditional research paradigms. We explain the structure and function of hearing voices peer support groups and the importance of training facilitators to acquire the skills necessary to ensure that groups operate safely, democratically, and in keeping with the theories and principles of the Hearing Voices Network.  The greater use of first-person experience as evidence in deciding what works or doesn’t work for people in extreme distress is advocated; randomized designs or statistically significant findings cannot constitute the only bases for clinical evaluations.

 

The Work of Experience Based Experts

Judi Chamberlin died in January, 2010 (Hevesi 2010). This chapter consists of a shortened version of Judi’s chapter in the first edition of Models of Madness, followed by a summary on the effectiveness of user led services and an account of the Hearing Voices Movement by Jacqui Dillon, Peter Bullimore and Debra Lampshire

Recovery, Discovery and Revolution: The Work of Intervoice and the Hearing Voices Movement

 

Contributors include Peter Beresford, Mary Boyle, John Cromby, Jacqui Dillon, Dave Harper, Eleanor Longden, Midlands Psychology group, Joanna Moncrieff, David Pilgrim, Phil Thomas and Jan Wallcraft.

 

This book contests how both society and Mental Health Services conceptualise and respond to madness. Despite sustained criticisms from academia, survivor groups and practitioners, the bio-genetic model of madness prevails and therefore shapes our very notions of what madness is, who the mad are and how to respond. This dominant yet narrow view, at the heart of the psychiatric system, is misinformed and misleading as well as fraught with tensions between the provision of care and the function of social control. How and why does this system continue? What can be done to change it?
 
Encompassing both academic analysis and practical application, Madness Contested brings together nurses, service-users, psychiatrists, psychologists, practitioners, and academics who promote alternative ways to understand and approach madness. Their contributions debate questions such as: What are the processes and forms of power involved in the current system? What interests are at play in maintaining dominant theories and practices? What are the alternative conceptualizations of madness? Can practice incorporate openness, modesty and a desire for equality? The perspectives are broad yet complimentary.
 
Of interest to all those interested in critical debates and alternative models of madness and mental health care, including: academics, practitioners, service users, survivors, carers, students.
For further information please see this link: http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/madness-contested-1/#

Or downlead the flyer: MadnessContestedEdsColesKeenanandDiamond

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.

 

Ritual Abuse

Ritual Abuse

On The Web

End Ritual Abusewww.endritualabuse.org
This site provides articles, resources, and links to information and support.

Extreme Abuse Surveywww.extreme-abuse-survey.net
Results, findings, questionnaires and presentations. More than 750 pages of documentation.

Mind Justicewww.mindjustice.org
An extensive and well-organized site on with articles, source material, and position papers on mind control, torture, and non-lethal weapons

Ritual Abuse, Ritual Crime and Healingwww.ra-info.org
Information for Survivor’s, Therapists and Others.

Ritual Abuse Network Scotlandwww.rans.org.uk
An informative and useful resource for anyone connected with ritual abuse anywhere in the world, be they survivors, counsellors, or just a concerned friend.

Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Evidence and Journal Articles – http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Satanic_Ritual_Abuse_Evidence_and_Journal_Articles

S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today): www.ritualabuse.us
Many articles, transcripts of speeches, information on up-coming conferences, plus all back issues of the newsletter.

Survivorshipwww.survivorship.org
For survivors of ritual abuse, mind control and torture and their allies.

In Print

Morris, M. (1982). If I Should Die Before I Wake. Black Swan Books.

Noblitt, R. and Perskin Noblitt, P. (2008). Ritual Abuse in the Twenty First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations. Robert. D. Reed Publishers.

Ross, C. (1995). Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principals of Treatment. University of Toronto Press.

Ryder, D. (1992). Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual Abuse: Recognizing and Recovering from the Hidden Trauma. Compcare Publishers.

Scott, S. (2001). The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Belief. Open University Press.

Sinason, V. (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. Routledge.

Smith, M. (1993). Ritual Abuse. What It Is, Why It Happens, How to Help. Harper: San Francisco.

A highly skilled, empathic teacher

I have employed Jacqui Dillon on a number of occasions, both as a trainer of mental health-care workers, and as a workshop facilitator with professional and service-user participation.

Jacqui is a highly skilled, empathic teacher who through her work and experience is an inspiration and motivator to all, promoting innovation and much-needed change in the way we approach psychiatry today.

Trevor Eyles
Developmental Consultant, Social Psychiatric Services
Aarhus Kommune, Denmark

Resources

Please use the above links to browse some resources I hope you’ll find useful. These include organisations, websites, journals and books.

Survival Techniques

Being proud of my experiences and being able to share them with others, challenges the stigma of having what are considered to be mental health problems, and means becoming a part of a collective voice to improve mental health services for all. This is both empowering and liberating, in itself.

Pages

Psychosis Journal Cover

Hearing Voices Peer Support Groups: A Powerful Alternative for People in Distress

Psychosis Journal CoverABSTRACT:

Hearing voices peer support groups offer a powerful alternative to mainstream psychiatric approaches for understanding and coping with states typically diagnosed as “hallucination”.  In this jointly authored first-person account, we distill what we have learned from 10 years of facilitating and training others to facilitate these groups and what enables them to work most effectively in the long term. Having witnessed the transformative power of these groups for people long considered unreachable as well as for those who receive some benefit from standard psychiatric treatment, we describe effects that cannot easily be quantified or studied within traditional research paradigms. We explain the structure and function of hearing voices peer support groups and the importance of training facilitators to acquire the skills necessary to ensure that groups operate safely, democratically, and in keeping with the theories and principles of the Hearing Voices Network.  The greater use of first-person experience as evidence in deciding what works or doesn’t work for people in extreme distress is advocated; randomized designs or statistically significant findings cannot constitute the only bases for clinical evaluations.

 

The Work of Experience Based Experts

Judi Chamberlin died in January, 2010 (Hevesi 2010). This chapter consists of a shortened version of Judi’s chapter in the first edition of Models of Madness, followed by a summary on the effectiveness of user led services and an account of the Hearing Voices Movement by Jacqui Dillon, Peter Bullimore and Debra Lampshire

Recovery, Discovery and Revolution: The Work of Intervoice and the Hearing Voices Movement

 

Contributors include Peter Beresford, Mary Boyle, John Cromby, Jacqui Dillon, Dave Harper, Eleanor Longden, Midlands Psychology group, Joanna Moncrieff, David Pilgrim, Phil Thomas and Jan Wallcraft.

 

This book contests how both society and Mental Health Services conceptualise and respond to madness. Despite sustained criticisms from academia, survivor groups and practitioners, the bio-genetic model of madness prevails and therefore shapes our very notions of what madness is, who the mad are and how to respond. This dominant yet narrow view, at the heart of the psychiatric system, is misinformed and misleading as well as fraught with tensions between the provision of care and the function of social control. How and why does this system continue? What can be done to change it?
 
Encompassing both academic analysis and practical application, Madness Contested brings together nurses, service-users, psychiatrists, psychologists, practitioners, and academics who promote alternative ways to understand and approach madness. Their contributions debate questions such as: What are the processes and forms of power involved in the current system? What interests are at play in maintaining dominant theories and practices? What are the alternative conceptualizations of madness? Can practice incorporate openness, modesty and a desire for equality? The perspectives are broad yet complimentary.
 
Of interest to all those interested in critical debates and alternative models of madness and mental health care, including: academics, practitioners, service users, survivors, carers, students.
For further information please see this link: http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/madness-contested-1/#

Or downlead the flyer: MadnessContestedEdsColesKeenanandDiamond

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.

 

Ritual Abuse

Ritual Abuse

On The Web

End Ritual Abusewww.endritualabuse.org
This site provides articles, resources, and links to information and support.

Extreme Abuse Surveywww.extreme-abuse-survey.net
Results, findings, questionnaires and presentations. More than 750 pages of documentation.

Mind Justicewww.mindjustice.org
An extensive and well-organized site on with articles, source material, and position papers on mind control, torture, and non-lethal weapons

Ritual Abuse, Ritual Crime and Healingwww.ra-info.org
Information for Survivor’s, Therapists and Others.

Ritual Abuse Network Scotlandwww.rans.org.uk
An informative and useful resource for anyone connected with ritual abuse anywhere in the world, be they survivors, counsellors, or just a concerned friend.

Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Evidence and Journal Articles – http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Satanic_Ritual_Abuse_Evidence_and_Journal_Articles

S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today): www.ritualabuse.us
Many articles, transcripts of speeches, information on up-coming conferences, plus all back issues of the newsletter.

Survivorshipwww.survivorship.org
For survivors of ritual abuse, mind control and torture and their allies.

In Print

Morris, M. (1982). If I Should Die Before I Wake. Black Swan Books.

Noblitt, R. and Perskin Noblitt, P. (2008). Ritual Abuse in the Twenty First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations. Robert. D. Reed Publishers.

Ross, C. (1995). Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principals of Treatment. University of Toronto Press.

Ryder, D. (1992). Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual Abuse: Recognizing and Recovering from the Hidden Trauma. Compcare Publishers.

Scott, S. (2001). The Politics and Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Belief. Open University Press.

Sinason, V. (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. Routledge.

Smith, M. (1993). Ritual Abuse. What It Is, Why It Happens, How to Help. Harper: San Francisco.

A highly skilled, empathic teacher

I have employed Jacqui Dillon on a number of occasions, both as a trainer of mental health-care workers, and as a workshop facilitator with professional and service-user participation.

Jacqui is a highly skilled, empathic teacher who through her work and experience is an inspiration and motivator to all, promoting innovation and much-needed change in the way we approach psychiatry today.

Trevor Eyles
Developmental Consultant, Social Psychiatric Services
Aarhus Kommune, Denmark

Resources

Please use the above links to browse some resources I hope you’ll find useful. These include organisations, websites, journals and books.

Survival Techniques

Being proud of my experiences and being able to share them with others, challenges the stigma of having what are considered to be mental health problems, and means becoming a part of a collective voice to improve mental health services for all. This is both empowering and liberating, in itself.