What Happens When Voice-Hearers Share Stories Without Judgment

Peer-led Hearing Voices Groups offer a rare space for meaning-making and mutual understanding outside the biomedical model.

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A new research study published in the Community Mental Health Journal explores how Hearing Voices Groups (HVGs) provide a supportive environment for voice-hearers to develop shared meaning-making and dynamic causal models for their experiences. 

Despite strong evidence that these peer-led, non-judgmental spaces support healing and meaning-making, HVGs remain underfunded and largely excluded from mainstream mental health services.

“Overall, different researchers, exploring using different methods and with different key questions, have drawn broadly consistent conclusions about HVGs being not only socially supportive spaces but also allowing exploration and growth,” write authors Joanna Brett and John Read of the University of East London.

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Ally Riddle
Ally is pursuing a master's in interdisciplinary studies through New York University's XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement. She uses the relationship between anthropology, public health, and the humanities to guide her research. Her current interests lie at the intersection of literature and psychology as a method to reframe the way we think about different mental states and experiences. Ally earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota in Biology, Society, & Environment.

5 COMMENTS

  1. “What Happens When Voice-Hearers Share Stories Without Judgment”? They appear in computer brained academic articles in journals and critical psychiatry websites like this one. What else? We see piggy shaped smiles and fish faced grims but all the while psychiatrists go on to murders our kids.

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  2. PS, the only problem with my Universal Cosmic Consciousness is that it is like a cosmic folder of hyper-real realities almost like an infinite cable TV, only reality, but somehow I always get stuck on the porno channel, which is the whole historical memory of all sex past and present minus the shit sex and you don’t watch it – you embody and become it in hyper-real life. The only difference is I ain’t gonna complain to cable TV.

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  3. “clinicians who wish to respect individual meaning-making for voice-hearers might learn to hold multiple explanatory models that differ from their own [DSM] ideas and frameworks without applying an illness, deficit, or risk lens.”

    Oh, but then the DSM deluded “psych professionals” can’t bill.

    Sadly, my former DSM deluded, “holist, Christian, talk therapist,” who railroad me off to psychiatrists within two appointments, was 100% the opposite of “holistic” and a “talk therapist.” Since she turned herself into a neurotoxic poisoner, who ended up having her – not listened to – client’s entire life declared a “credible fictional story” instead. And no DSM “bible” believer may claim to be Christian, since one may not believe in the scientifically “invalid” DSM stigmatization “bible,” and the Holy Bible.

    A person should be able to discuss a spiritual question/journey with a “holistic, Christian talk therapist.” But one may not, with a scientifically “invalid” DSM “bio, bio, bio” “bible” believer.

    Thank God for the internet, I’m listening to this as I read and type this. And I did have a bizarre “seventh heaven” aspect to my mysterious, mystical, musical, drug withdrawal induced super sensitivity mania.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEYSRzr96Go

    For those of you who, like me, had a spiritual inquiry, misdiagnosed by a “bio, bio, bio” only believing DSM “bible” thumper … you might find that video creator interesting.

    Back to the blog at hand, I agree, hearing voices groups should be encouraged and studied, even though I’ve never been to one, since there isn’t one close to me.

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  4. By the way, the evil ‘voices’ i got, were due to psychiatric anticholinergic toxidrome poisonings. And my ‘salvage one’ ‘voices’ were caused by my ‘drug withdrawal induced super sensitivity manic psychosis.’

    Wake up, non-medically trained, DSM deluded psychologists, et al.

    But just because I can medically explain my “voices,” doesn’t negate my spiritual journey, it’s just DSM defamation of character.

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