Jacqui Dillon
Hearing Voices Network
National Chair, England
www.jacquidillon.org
The Hearing Voices Movement
• Last year, we celebrated 25th anniversary of the Global
Hearing Voices Movement.
• Professor Marius Romme & Dr Sandra Escher and Patsy
Hage.
• Biological psychiatry = voices are a product of brain and
cognitive faults.
• Radical shift = voices make sense when looking at the
traumatic circumstances in life that provoked them.
• Romme & Escher’s research shows that at least 77%* of
people who hear voices have had some traumatic
experience which they connect with hearing voices.
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The Hearing Voices Movement
• Contests the traditional psychiatric relationship of
dominant-expert clinician and passive-recipient
patient.
• 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.
• Views voice-hearing as a significant and meaningful
human experience.
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The Hearing Voices Movement
• HVN creates sanctuary; safe spaces to share taboo
experiences, where there are real possibilities for healing and
growth.
• Free to share and explore experiences in detail including the
content of what voices say, without threat of censorship, loss
of liberty or forced medication, a common feature of
disclosure in traditional psychiatric settings.
• 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.
• Part of a wider aim within the mental health user movement
to decolonise medicalised language of human experience.
www.jacquidillon.org
HVN is a network of people who hear
voices, their friends and relatives, carers,
support workers, psychologists,
psychiatrists and others, who work
together, to gain a better understanding
of hearing voices, seeing visions, tactile
sensations and other sensory
experiences and work to reduce
ignorance and anxiety about these
issues.
www.jacquidillon.org
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Information
Self- help groups
Publications
Newsletter
Training
Help-line for voicehearers
• Individual & Group
Membership
• Website
• Research
• Media
• Intervoice
www.jacquidillon.org
International Developments
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Australia,
Austria,
Belgium,
Canada,
Denmark,
England,
Finland,
France
Germany,
Greece,
Holland,
Ireland
Italy,
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Japan
Kenya,
Malaysia.
New Zealand,
Norway,
Palestine,
Scotland,
South Africa,
Spain,
Sweden,
Switzerland,
Uganda,
USA,
Wales….
www.jacquidillon.org
Trilogy
Accepting Voices - (1993)
Making Sense of Voices – (2000)
Living with Voices - (2009)
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Living with Voices
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Living with Voices
• Anthology of 50 stories of voice hearers who have
learned to live with their voices through accepting
them.
• Contributions from voice hearers from all over the
world, including England, Scotland, Wales, Holland,
Sweden, Germany, Nigeria, New Zealand, America,
Denmark, Norway.
• Several key themes have emerged that illustrate how
it is possible to live a fulfilling life with the experience
of hearing voices.
www.jacquidillon.org
Voices are a Survival Strategy:
• Point at real life problems in the past and the
present
• Use metaphorical language that can be translated
into real life challenges
• Are split off feelings - feelings that are unbearable
• Are awful messages about terrifying past
experiences
• Voices are both an attack on identity and a way to
protect or preserve identity
• Is there any difference between ‘psychotic’ voices
and ‘dissociative’ voices?
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Causes of Hearing Voices:
(as reported by voice hearers)
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Sexual abuse - 18 (3 + physical abuse)
Emotional neglect - 11 (3 + sexual abuse)
Adolescent problems - 6
High stress - 4
Being Bullied - 2
Physical abuse - 2
Not clear - 7
• Total 50
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Recent studies have demonstrated that a wide range of adversities are
predictors of many forms
of serious mental health issues including psychosis.
These adversities have been found to include:
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Mother’s ill health, poor nutrition and high stress during pregnancy.
Being the product of an unwanted pregnancy.
Early loss of parents via death or abandonment.
Attachment difficulties.
Witnessing interparental violence.
Intergenerational trauma.
Dysfunctional parenting (particularly ‘affectionless over control’).
Parental substance misuse, mental health problems and criminal behaviour.
Childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Childhood emotional or physical neglect.
Bullying.
Childhood medical illness.
War trauma.
Poverty, racism and other forms of social inequality.
Read, J & Bentall, R (2012). Editorial: Negative childhood experiences and mental health: Theoretical,
clinical and primary prevention implications. British Journal of Psychiatry, 200, 89-91.
www.jacquidillon.org
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Childhood Adversity & Psychosis
• For example, research indicates that those abused as children are
9.3 times more likely to develop psychosis; for those suffering the
severest kinds of abuse, the risk rises to 48 times (Janssen et al.,
2004).
• People who have endured three kinds of abuse (e.g., sexual,
physical, bullying) are at 18-fold higher risk of psychosis, whereas
those experiencing five types are 193 more likely to become
psychotic (Shevlin et al., 2007).
• Furthermore, individuals with psychosis are three times more likely
to have experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA) than those with
other diagnoses, and 15 times more likely to have been abused
than non-patients (Bebbington et al., 2004).
• This link appears to be a causal one, with dose-dependent
relationships evident between the severity, frequency and number
of types of adverse experience, and the probability of ‘symptoms’.
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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:
Religious
Psychological
Technological
Spiritual,
Paranormal
Other…
Cultural
Philosophical
Countercultural
Medical
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Living with Voices: Key Themes
‘Recovery’ is not about getting rid of
voices but about:
• The person understanding their voices in relation
to their life experiences
• The person changing their relationship with their
voices so that the voices become harmless and/or
helpful.
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Living with Voices: Key Themes
Important steps in recovering from the distress
associated with hearing voices:
• Meeting someone who takes an interest in the voice hearer
as a person
• Giving hope by normalising the experience and showing that
there is a way out
• Meeting people who accept the voices as real; being accepted
as a voice hearer by others, but also by oneself
• Becoming actively interested in the hearing voices experience
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Living with Voices: Key Themes
Important steps in recovering from the distress
associated with hearing voices:
• Recognising the voices as personal and becoming the owner
of your voices
• Changing the power structure between you and your voices
• Making choices
• Changing the relationship with your voices
• Recognising ones own emotions, accepting them and
expressing them
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Divided World
Them
Us
Abnormal
Normal
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United World
Extreme
Experience
Moderate
Experience
Continuum
of
Experience
Ordinary
Reaction
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Extraordinary
Reaction
Further Information:
www.hearing-voices.org
www.intervoiceonline.org
www.jacquidillon.org
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