The Hearing Voices Movement
The Hearing Voices Network is a UK-based organization devoted to raising awareness of the experience of hearing voices and supporting those who hear them. They do not support a solely medical approach to the subject; rather, there is an increased focus on the personal significance of the voices to those who hear them. An overview of their guiding philosophy is provided in the Web article Redefining Hearing Voices:
Hearing voices in itself is not a symptom of an illness, but is apparent in 2–3% of the population. One in three becomes a psychiatric patient—but two in three can cope well and are in no need of psychiatric care and no diagnosis can be given because 2/3 are quite healthy and well functioning.
…but I have to wonder how much their views are affected by sampling bias (being more likely to hear about people having problems), because they go on to say the following:
They are messengers and they have a message. They are related to sincere problems that occurred in the person’s life and they tell us about those problems. Therefore it is not wise to kill the messenger.
In any case, they bring up a very good point—that what a person is told regarding the meaning of their experiences has a large effect on how well they deal with them:
In Sandra Escher’s research with children hearing voices she followed 82 children over a period of four years. In that period 64% of the children’s voices disappeared congruently with learning to cope with emotions and becoming less stressed. In children with whom the voices were psychiatrised and made a part of an illness and not given proper attention, voices did not vanish, but became worse; the development of those children was delayed.
This is something we often forget: the power that our essentially arbitrary culture and beliefs have over us, and our own power to change them.
Other Hearing Voices Movement Links:
- Hearing Voices FAQ
- Listening cure (Newspaper article)
- Hearing Voices Movement on Wikipedia
83 comments January 23rd, 2006