Excerpt on Hearing Voices

Published May 20, 2018 by Nan Mykel

From June 2018 Harpers by T.M. Luhrmann, via 3 Quarks Daily

In 1973, David Rosenhan, a professor of psychology at Stanford,….persuaded seven friends to join him in an experiment. He asked them to make appointments at multiple psychiatric hospitals across the country and explain to the doctors that they had heard voices that said things like “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud.” Apart from their names and professions, they were to change no details about their lives. Each participant was admitted as an inpatient to a psychiatric ward, and in every case but one they were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Doctors released them after, on average, nineteen days, but one was held for nearly two months. “It is clear,” Rosenhan wrote, “that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals.”….

….Self-report measures find that they work. That is, the methods make hearing voices less aggravating for most people, and some find that their voices become kinder, softer, or even go away. In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, Hearing Voices groups have become almost mainstream, and many European clinicians have abandoned the oversimplified biomedical approach that treats voices as irrational byproducts of a disordered brain.

For a lot more info from the original article in Harpers June 2018 see Harpers pr 3Quarks Daily

Talking Back to Your Voices-excerpt from American Scholar 2016

Published August 9, 2016 by Nan Mykel

head free digital

…Then Hans joined a group of people like him who met once a week. They talked about their voices, and they were encouraged to talk back to them. They were even encouraged to negotiate with their voices. One of Hans’s voices thought he would be better off if he devoted his life to Buddhist prayer. Hans is not a Buddhist—like many Dutch, he grew up as a secular Protestant—and he did not want to follow the voice’s command. The group persuaded him to cut a deal with his voices. He told his voices that he would read a book on Buddhism every day for one hour—but no more. He would say one Buddhist prayer every day—but no more. And if he did this, he told them, they had to leave him alone.

They did, more or less. He began to feel better. His psychiatrists began to lower his Clozaril from its high of 500 mg per day down eventually to a dose of 50 mg. He lost weight. He became more alert. He moved out of the hospital. The voices didn’t disappear immediately, but they got nicer. When he was moving into an apartment by himself—and petrified by the prospect—he heard a voice say, “Buck up, we know you can do it.” By the time I met him in 2009, he hadn’t heard a voice in more than a year.

Healing Voices Invitation — from Hearing Voices

Published July 14, 2016 by Nan Mykel

“Comment on World Hearing Voices Day ‘Healing Voices’ Screenings: An invitation” “http://www.intervoiceonline.org/4361/news/healing-voices.html#respond”>Share your views

We’ve been contacted by the producers of ‘Healing Voices‘, a documentary that explores experiences commonly labelled as ‘psychosis’ and ‘mental illness’ through the real-life stories of individuals working to overcome […]

“http://www.intervoiceonline.org/tag/world-hearing-voices-day” rel=”tag”>World Hearing Voices Day

World Hearing Voices Day – 14 September

2016 has been a difficult year so far, with many violent actions fuelled by intolerance, hatred and fear. We stand alongside those who have been victimised, hurt, abused, neglected or left feeling […]