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Pat Bracken

2008-05-11T20:15:00Z

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Reflections on the making of "The Doctor Who Hears Voices" by Rufus May

2008-05-09T19:53:00Z

Paged updated 09/05/2008

Hearing Voices from the Television:

Reflections on the making of "The Doctor Who Hears Voices"

by Rufus May

When Leo Regan became interested in filming my work as a psychologist he warned me I would soon sick be of him, I didn’t know what he meant. Eighteen months later I now have a clearer idea! Leo always wanted to get underneath the skin of help-giving and often it was quite exhausting for everyone involved! It took over a year for Leo Regan to make the film about my work called The Doctor who hears voices. Leo has tried to show the humanity of working in alternative ways with voice hearing. The result is a film that is both challenging and realistic in its presentation of the dilemmas of giving people real choices about how to manage an episode of intense distress.

Over a million people watched it when it was broadcast in April in the U.K. on channel 4. Thousands of people are now down loading form several Internet sites. It has provoked a strong response from viewers. Many people have been inspired by the film, others more attached to a medical approach to distress have been outraged. I think the film is unusual in that it successfully managed to be a documentary about mental health that avoided the usual traps of being a freak show. Partly because the story shows that mental health problems are understandable and meaningful and also shows my vulnerability it crosses the typical boundaries between professional and ‘patient’. A few journalists were quite uncomfortable with this blurring of boundaries. The principle that there is an expertise of experience that can be as valuable as academic or professional expertise is quite new and a bit threatening to mainstream commentators. Never mind! Hopefully they will get use to the idea.

I am a psychologist in the NHS working with adults with mental health problems. I believe people are capable of recovering from all mental health problems if they get the right support. I myself had a psychotic episode when I was eighteen and recovered despite doctors telling me I had a lifelong condition called schizophrenia and that I would always need medication. I think originally Leo was interested in how my role as a ‘wounded healer’ might affect how I tried to help people.

With his camera in tow, Leo steadily shadowed me at both work and in my independent role giving talks and campaigning. Leo wanted his footage to be ‘real’ and not contrived. He went to a lot of effort to film me when I was worried and anxious as well as when I was confident and self-assured. On one occasion he even turned up at my house at three in the morning! The final film focuses on my relationship with Ruth who I decided to try and help outside of my NHS work. Ruth was a junior doctor who was suspended from her practice for having suicidal ideas. After the suspension she started to hear an aggressive voice for he first time telling her to kill herself. Coincidentally, she had approached me for advice just before she started to hear voices. She had stopped taking medication some time before. She could not approach her doctors for help with her voice hearing because she feared that she would definitely lose her medical career. 

I set about supporting Ruth non medically. My approach is strongly influenced both by my own recovery journey, holistic health approaches and the ideas of the hearing voices movement. It was important to give her lots of psychological and physical techniques to cope with her sleep problems, her voice hearing and her moods. I became the only person she could trust with what was really going on. Leo was very interested in her story and tried to film us working together on these issues but it was impossible because of her need for confidentiality and secrecy. As she put it “you cannot be a doctor and hear voices”. So instead we began to carefully document our meetings so that we could re-enact them with an actor. 

Even documenting the work added pressure to Ruth. For example, often after Leo had interviewed Ruth about how she was doing, I would find that she was extremely distressed the next day. On one occasion I banned Leo from meeting with Ruth for over a month. At that point I felt that we would have to keep Ruth out of the film entirely. In the end Ruth and I decided the pain of the film making was worth the gain of telling her story.

I was working totally against the grain of conventional wisdom. Most health professionals believe that when someone starts to hear voices or get paranoid, both of which Ruth was going through, you have to intervene with medication. If you don’t, conventional thinking argues, the person’s brain will deteriorate irreversibly. I firmly did not believe this but, at times, supporting Ruth through her crisis as she struggled with suicidal ideas and intense paranoia, I did question my rationale. I wondered whether my approach was making her worse not better. I knew if she did kill herself I could be held responsible. At the same time I saw an intelligent dedicated person who had been let down by a judgmental employment system, who I believed could recover and make a valuable contribution to society as a Doctor.

Ruth had been told she had a lifelong condition called Bipolar Disorder, that her brain was fundamentally different to other people, in other words she would always be inferior to others. I gave her a different model; firstly, that she could recover a good life. Secondly, that her distressing experiences were not the product of a faulty brain but meaningful communications. I suggested it might not be useful to see herself as having a medical condition called bipolar disorder or any other psychiatric label. I believed that all of her experiences including mood swings, critical thoughts, paranoia and voice hearing were understandable reactions to difficult life events. For example, a lot of her paranoia and voice hearing reflected the way her employers were treating her, as if she was a liability, by suspending her and refusing to trust in her ability to be a good doctor. I was suggesting that these so-called ‘symptoms’ were actually ‘messengers’ about past and present hostile environments and that it was fundamental not to blame herself and give up. Importantly Ruth needed to become confident in resisting the prejudice of her employers by lying to them about her mental health. She could not afford to tell them she was hearing voices. This was hard for Ruth as she is an honest person and she felt her integrity was being ripped apart. As we worked on deeper issues I encouraged her to express her emotions and address buried wounds in order to be released from demons of her past. At times she slipped deeper into paranoia and it was on these occasions that both of us had our faith tested in my approach. 

The film charts Ruth’s journey though these experiences and also gives us some insight into the more conventional psychiatric approach. Psychiatrist Trevor Turner, former Vice Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatry, outlines the importance of giving people in Ruth’s situation medication whether they want it or not because “miracles do occur”. If they don’t want to take medication most psychiatrists and nurses will choose to force people to take medication against their will. In the film Trevor gives a reassuring description of how nurses are trained to pateinets and forcibly inject them with medication “in the most comfortable and supportive way”.

I hope the film triggers a debate not just about the rights of health professionals to hear voices but also about the rights of people in crisis to a force free mental health service. Every week thousands of people are coerced into taking medication that they don’t want and this frequently does more harm than good. Without giving away the outcome of the film, Ruth and I attempted to work on her recovery in a force free way that honoured her right to have a drug free approach. We had to do this in an underground way. This is surely wrong. It is surely wrong that many psychiatrists do not see their patient’s ‘mad’ experiences as meaningful. It is surely wrong that they do not promote optimism and a belief in recovery. It is surely wrong that psychotropic drugs that impair functioning are seen as the first port of call and that patients have little choice over what goes in their bodies. It is surely wrong that many people who stop taking their medication feel they have to lie about this to their psychiatrists. We are supposed to live in a democracy but if you are being treated for a mental health problem in our society you are very often living in a totalitarian regime. 

The ‘real Ruth’ bravely decided to speak out about these kind of injustices by agreeing to have her story documented, hopefully the number of people speaking out about our society’s approach to mental health will continue to grow.

For more information see The Rufus May website

Am I Normal?: Programme description

2008-04-29T06:06:00Z

Am I Normal?

Mon 28 Apr, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm 60mins

Spirituality.

Reports suggest fewer people in Britain today follow a religion than ever before. Yet most of us still cling to the idea of life after death, spirits and the supernatural. Why do we judge some as true believers and others as religious nuts? And what happens when the worlds of hard scientific fact and pure faith collide? Clinical psychologist Dr Tanya Byron explores what some consider as the fine line between religious devotion and psychiatric disorder. She sees what happens when rational scientists try to analyse religious phenomena like Speaking in Tongues and Hearing Voices, and considers the beliefs of faith healers who claim miracles happen.

Talking with Voices: An Introduction

2008-04-28T10:34:00Z

Article last updated 28/04/2008

Many people who hear challenging voices have found that a turning point in coping with the experience is finding different ways of talking with and understanding them. Exploring the voice’s motives and discovering different ways of relating to them can help change the relationship between the voice-hearer and their voices.

Why is Speaking With Voices Helpful?

1. This method does not focus on voices as a symptom of “illness”: nor does it concentrate on discovering what is “wrong” with the person.
2. It offers a neutral but strong attitude to work with voices - acceptance is the core of the technique.
3. It offers a positive model for the existence of voices.
4. It helps develop increased awareness, objectivity and a more productive relationship between voices and voice-hearer.
5. By definition, voice-hearing is very lonely experience. Allowing others to “hear” the voices is empowering, liberating and a source of considerable support. In turn, it also affords professionals, friends and family some valuable insight into the reality of a person’s voice-hearing experience.

Basic Principles

The most essential principle is that we are not necessarily trying to change the voices, nor banish them from the person’s life. What we are trying to do is explore their relationship with the voice-hearer. Doing this work will help the individual gain a different perspective on what the voices are trying to say: and if the person can develop a stronger attitude then the voices are able to change. Our aim is not to get rid of the voices, but to make their relationship with the voice-hearer more equal through helping the person take back control.

If you would like to find out more about this method, you can read the full article on Voice Dialoguing by Rufus, Eleanor and Dirk here

Press Release: The Doctor Who Hears Voices, Drama-doc about voice hearer and professional working together is way forward

2008-04-21T19:47:00Z

www.intervoiceonline.org

21^st April 2008

For immediate Release:

Press Release: 

TV Drama-doc about voice hearer and professional working together is way forward says international hearing voices movement

The doctor who hears voices: Channel 4, Monday 21 April 10pm

featuring Rufus May and actress Ruth Wilson

INTERVOICE welcomes the broadcast of this critically acclaimed and groundbreaking drama-doc about the experience of hearing voices.

In the reconstructed documentary, INTERVOICE member, Rufus May shows it is possible to help someone who hears overwhelming and destructive voices to live their life without recourse to coercive treatment and/or powerful medications. “The doctor who hears voices” not only challenges the stigma and prejudices that surround the experience of hearing voices it also provides powerful evidence of the possibility of how people who hear voices can be assisted in learning ways to accept their voices and to recover their life.

This documentary focuses on Rufus' and his support support of Ruth, a junior doctor who is suspended from her job after she starts to hear a voice telling her to kill herself. It follows their 18-month journey as Ruth is determined to become well enough to retain her job and manage her voice and health problems.
It shows how Rufus's innovative approach to working with people who hear voices - including most importantly: respecting the persons own explanation for their experience. Getting them to discuss what their voices are saying and what they represent, whilst also opposing the often automatic and unreliable diagnosis of schizophrenia. Something that rarely if ever happens in most mental health services.

Rufus is not only a leading expert in the field of psychology he also speaks from personal experience. At 18, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and told he would be taking medication for the rest of his life. Rufus quickly decided that his experience would not hold him back and against his doctor's advice came off his medication and trained as a clinical psychologist. He is now revered in his field and has recently been nominated for the Mind Champion of the Year Award 2008 for his efforts to improve public understanding of mental health issues.

As Rufus says

"In the film "The Doctor Who Hears Voices" I am called a Maverick Psychologist but it is important to state there is whole school of maverick psychology to which I belong, called the International Hearing Voices movement. This movement is a combination of activists, therapists, academics and voice hearers all on an equal footing. The original Maverick refused to brand his cattle - we similarly refuse to brand people as schizophrenic when they hear voices, instead looking at the voices as messengers about peoples lives. In the film I am shown talking to Ruth's voices. This pioneering approach comes directly from my training with members of the international voice hearing movement from pioneers like Ron Coleman, Marius Romme, Sandra Escher, and Dirk Corstens to name but a few."

INTERVOICE President, Professor Marius Romme, a respected social psychiatrist called on Mental Health Services to assist in the the further development of this approach:

“This programme shows that by simply sitting down and talking to a voice hearer about their experience, validating the reality of what is happening to them and working alongside them to better understand the message the voices bring, then dealing with these issues, a person can start to live their life again. Rufus is only one committed expert by profession, imagine if whole services worked in the same way? This approach is not controversial or dangerous, it is based on over 20 years of research and action and now with initiatives in 19 countries across the world. It represents a major challenge to the approach used by psychiatric services. We urge professionals to listen to what their patients are telling them and help them understand their experiences.”

We are an network of people who believe we should listen to voices. The film takes this movement to a new audience. Perhaps one day around the world we will all listen to voices!

END

Information for Editors

For more information about our approach to hearing voices visit the INTERVOICE site at www.intervoiceonline.org

Read more about the Hearing Voices Movement at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_Voices_Movement

Contact: Paul Baker, INTERVOICE coordinator on + 34 965263097 or email us: admin@intervoiceonline.org 

Some facts about hearing voices:

Hearing voices in itself is not a symptom of an illness, but is apparent in 2 - 4 % of the population (some research gives higher estimates) and even more (about 8%) have peculiar personal convictions, that we call delusions, and do so without being ill. Whilst one in three becomes a psychiatric patient - 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. It is very significant that there are in our society more people hearing voices who never became psychiatric patients than there are people who hear voices and become psychiatric patients.
Marius Romme (2001) 

Psychiatry in our western culture unjustly identifies hearing voices with schizophrenia. Going to a psychiatrist with hearing voices gives you an 80% chance of getting a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Marius Romme (2001) 

In our research concerning people who hear voices we found that in 77% of the people diagnosed with schizophrenia the hearing of voices was related to traumatic experiences. These traumatic experiences varied from being sexually abused, physically abused, being extremely belittled over long periods from young age, being neglected during long periods as a youngster, being very aggressively treated in marriage, not being able to accept ones sexual identity, etc
Marius Romme (2006) 

Hearing voices in itself is not related to the illness of schizophrenia. In population research only 16% of the whole group of voice hearers can be diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Marius Romme (2001) 

The prognosis of hearing voices is more positive than generally is perceived. 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.
Marius Romme (2006) 

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'Beyond Recovery', 1st May 2008 London

2008-04-20T07:27:00Z

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The London Hearing Voices Groups Project is hosting a days training called 'Beyond Recovery' on 1st May 2008 in London.

Mike Smith & Marion Aslan (Crazy Diamond Training & Consultancy) will be running this practical day of workshops and presentations aimed at exploring our understanding of voices, visions & other unusual experiences.

The idea is to move beyond the idea of recovery, and look at the ways in which we can support group members to truly thrive.

Although this is a trianing day primarily for people facilitating groups in the London area (people within our network - LHVN - get the day at a cheaper price) is is open to anyone else who would find it useful/interesting.

Places are limited, though, so it's important to contact us to book a place asap (LHVN@mindincamden.org.uk)

Cost: Voice Hearers: FREE, Members of LHVN: £25, Others: £50

Date: Thursday 1st May 2008, 10.30am – 4.30pm

Venue: Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ
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Doctor Who Hears Voices Monday 21 April Radio Times Reviews and more information ...

2008-04-17T15:05:00Z

Doctor Who Hears Voices Monday 21 April Radio Times Review

10:00pm - 11:20pm

Channel 4

Leo Regan's superb drama-doc tells the true story of Ruth, a young doctor who was suspended from her job after admitting to feeling suicidal. Ruth's scenes are reconstructed using an actor (Ruth Wilson, who is amazing), and seamlessly woven into documentary footage. Ruth isn't just depressed, she also hears a voice in her head that tells her to do destructive things (kill herself; kill other people), and she has paranoid delusions. Treating her is clinical psychologist Dr Rufus May, a fascinating figure who believes that medicating people like Ruth makes them "stupid" and can destroy lives.

Instead, he tries to break the hold the voice has on Ruth by talking to it and working out who it represents. Rufus knows what he's talking about: he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 18. His imitation of what it feels like to have a voice in your head is shocking, as are the scenes where he engages in "radical dialogue" with Ruth's voice. You're willing for his unorthodox approach to work even as it exposes huge issues over how we treat mental illness and addresses that darkest of questions - what it means to be "mad".

Also see Channel Four Programme description here

With figures suggesting as many as one in four people suffer from mental illness at some point in their lives, the film prompts the question, how far can people who hear voices also continue to live a normal life?
DigiGuide review

And a wonderful discussion on the BBC Disability message board OUCH

This is extract:

A conversation with an AB friend. Yesterday, after the trailer on C4.

HIM: Oh wow. That looks amazing. ME: Yeah, I've heard he's an amazing guy. HIM: I wouldn't want to be treated by someone who hears voices tho.

[In the trailer, Rufus May is shown with a junior doctor who's a voice hearer. He's refering to her, not to him.]

ME: Um... Surely that depends on whether they are competent to treat you? HIM: Oh come on.
ME: No really. Many people live happily with hearing voices in the same way I live happily with CP.
HIM: Wilma, that's completely different and you know it,
ME: It's not.
HIM: So you'd be happy if your doctor was a SCHIZOPHRENIC?
ME: Um... Do you even know what Schizophrenic means? Not everyone who hears voices is Schizophrenic, anyway.
HIM: Everyone who hears voices is MENTALLY ILL.
ME: That's a point of debate. Anyway. if they were a qualified doctor who was well enough to treat me, that would be fine with me.
HIM: Wilma, deep down you know that's not true.
ME: It is true.
HIM: You don't mean it. You're just trying to wind me up.
ME: I'm not. You know my friend X is a voice hearer? She hears voices all the time. She lives comfortably with it. She knows intimate details of my life. I trust her implicitly.
HIM: Oh, that's COMPLETELY different.
ME: Why?
HIM: She's a writer. It's OK for writers to be mentally ill.
ME: Ha! I don't think X does consider herself to be ill, you know. She receives no treatment. She lives comfortably with her symptoms. In the same way I don't consider myself to be ill.
HIM: Anyone who hears voices MUST be MENTALLY ILL.
ME: Oh shut up and watch the programme when it's on.

[Continues for about 3 hours until I threaten to beat him about the head with my stick.]

Hearing Voices: Don’t fight it, because you are fighting with yourself, Brian´s Story

2008-04-13T07:39:00Z

Page updated 13/04/2008

Brian from Australia describes his road to recovery from experiencing negative voices and shares what he has learnt over the last eight years.

Boy, there is some great info on this web site. Just wished I had found it 8 years ago.

Yes folks the usual story, a period of great stress, and bingo a "voice" that’s starts talking to you.

I think the biggest shock is that your privacy has been violated.

All those years of growing up by your own thoughts, then suddenly you have to start sharing space with some other Turkey.

Having to cope with all this nonsense and abuse, saps all the remaining energy you had.

So you become tired and exhausted, cant fight back, whilst the abuse gets louder and more distressing. You have lost the fight to stay sane.

Your relationships are in taters, probably had to give up your job, and you think might be time to follow their advice, chuck in the towel, and end it all.

But with the help of my wife, and the local doctor, medication was available to fix the chemical imbalance brought about by a long period of stress. The voices calmed down as I was forced to calm down with medication.

Fast forward 8 years and what have I learnt.

Don’t fight it, because you are fighting with yourself.

What’s that mean?

Consciousness is divided into 3 sections

1. Awake and Alert Consciousness

2. Sub Consciousness – Automatic body functions, dreams.

3. Super Consciousness – Soul or Higher Self

In a nutshell, (you) higher self who runs the show, wants you to experience life as he or she has planned out. That is the lesson you have to learn in this life. Now if you stuff around doing your own thing, and driving your self into the ground and haven’t achieved the main goals that higher self and you have pre planned, sooner or later you’re going to get a big kick in the pants. And it’s not pleasant.

Your higher self, (remember this is you), will give you merry hell, till you change your attitude about thinking that you run the entire show. Wrong. Forget about free will that’s a myth.

Your higher self will create all sorts of demons and abuse, and in the next instant be super nice. One minute you’re speaking with god, the next you’re dancing with the devil.

Why are you put through all this torture? Because it creates awareness that something is extremely out of balance. This whole experience is the catalyst for change and if you don’t get back into balance, you end up full time in the nut house.

Don’t expect higher self to give you an answer, that would violate so called free will. What a joke. You have to solve the problem and get back on track. Whether it is a current problem or something back in your past that’s unresolved. Forget about past life karma that’s all been erased, and is not in this life’s equation.

So I have done most of all this. Mind you a lot of kicking and screaming along the way.

Life’s good now. And yes Mr. Not Happy is still around still talking rubbish. Mind you the only tiny morsel of good info that I ever managed to wrangle out of him was.

“Life is Balance. On this earth you’re going to get a polarity of extremes. Love and Hate.

Learn to live with both” enjoy the journey.

Hope my story helps to all you good people who are suffering.

Remember there are no real demons, only if you think there are.

One day you will thank yourself for helping you change.

Brian.

The Doctor Who Hears Voices

2008-04-12T19:11:00Z

Coming soon...

To be broadcast on Channel Four, 10.00pm, 21st April 2008

The Doctor Who Hears Voices

Drama documentary, 70mins Kudos/Ch4

Starring - Ruth Wilson & Rufus May
Director of Photography - Johann Perry
Sound Recordist - Mary Milton
Editor - David Hill
Director - Leo Regan

Dr Rufus May is a maverick psychologist.
He thinks madness is a good thing.

Last week Ruth Fielding came to see him for the first time.

Ruth’s a junior doctor who’s hearing a voice telling her to kill herself.
Most doctors would say Ruth is a danger to herself and others, and have her sectioned.
Rufus is different.
He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with hearing voices.

Rufus May is one of the most controversial doctors working in the NHS today.
He thinks all mental hospitals should be shut down, there’s no such thing as schizophrenia and medication destroys lives.
He says we should learn to love mad people.
He does.
He was mad himself once.

To protect Ruth’s identity an actor is used to tell her story and some details have been changed.
Everything you see with Ruth is based on original transcripts, recorded over twelve months.
Everything else is documentary footage, filmed as it happened.

This is an unusual project where documentary and drama are used together. The documentary sections had been shot by director Leo Regan previously over a period of months. Drama reconstruction was used to protect the identity of the real "Ruth" here played by actress Ruth Wilson. Rufus May appears as himself across documentary and dramatised sections which gives real continuity to the piece.

Make a donation to INTERVOICE

2008-03-10T10:48:00Z

Page updated 25/04/2008

Your donation to INTERVOICE will help us to continue to develop our work throughout the world and to offer our vital information and support services to help positively change the life of people who hear voices.

You can make a donation using the International Bank Account Number (IBAN). The aim of the IBAN is to facilitate the automatic processing of cross-border credit transfers.
Give your bank this information and let us know you have made a donation:

INTERNATIONAL HEARING VOICES; IBAN; BE46 7350 1875 4936; BIC; KREDBEBB.

Alternatively you can donate using our secure online PayPal account, using this system you can donate using a Visa/Master Card etc, if you wish to do so, then click on the button below and you will go to our PayPal account page. We will be automatically informed of any donations given in this way.

<form action='https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr' method='post'> <input name='cmd' type='hidden' value='_donations'> <input name='business' type='hidden' value='admin@intervoiceonline.org'> <input name='item_name' type='hidden' value='INTERVOICE'> <input name='no_shipping' type='hidden' value='0'> <input name='no_note' type='hidden' value='1'> <input name='currency_code' type='hidden' value='EUR'> <input name='tax' type='hidden' value='0'> <input name='lc' type='hidden' value='BE'> <input name='bn' type='hidden' value='PP-DonationsBF'> <input name='submit' src='https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif' type='image' border='0' alt='Make payments with PayPal - it\'s fast, free and secure!'> </form>

You can also send a bank draft or cheque (Euros) in favour of INTERNATIONAL HEARING VOICES and posting it to Sandra Escher, c/o Drees 11B, s Gravenvoeren, 3798 BELGIUM

All donations will be acknowledged by email or in writing on receipt.

Information about INTERNATIONAL HEARING VOICES

The International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing Voices (INTERVOICE) was established in 1997, it provides developmental and co-ordinating support to the wide variety of hearing voices initiatives across the world.

In 2006 as a result of increasing interest in our work we set up this website and began to provide a wider range of services to people who hear voices.

In 2007 we incorporated as a not for profit company under UK law, the directors are Marius Romme and Sandra Escher. We are seeking charitable status at this time.

The president of INTERVOICE is Professor Marius Romme.

Italy: Let Us Give Our Voices a Voice, 1st National Meeting of Self Help Groups of Voice Hearers

2008-03-01T20:35:00Z

Updated 01/03/2008

1st National Meeting of Self Help Groups of Voice Hearers
“Let Us Give Our Voices a Voice”

May 9th -10th, 2008
Reggio Emilia

Promoted by: 
AUSL (Local Health Authority), Reggio Emilia 
National Network “Le Parole Ritrovate” (“The Words Recovered”) 

“I am nobody! Who are you?
You too are nobody!
Well, there will be the two of us!
But do not tell anybody else!
That’s horrible being somebody!
How trivial! Like a frog who keeps repeating its name
Through all the month of June to a swamp
That stands gazing at it”.

Emily Dickinson, 1861 

Introduction

“ Le Parole Ritrovate” were born with the purpose of creating a meeting opportunity among service users, families, health care providers, local policy makers and citizens, to enhance and promote mental health policies. The basic culture is “doing alongside”, believing that practice and knowledge of these worlds, so often marginal and hardly co-operative, might instead enable people to find health paths and reclaim the right of citizenship for the sufferers and empowerment of all the individuals involved. 
“Le Parole Ritrovate” meetings represent an opportunity to compare experiences, share projects and create new pathways along which to walk together. Hearing voices is a common experience, but it is often unspoken and hidden for fear of prejudice and social exclusion. People who hear voices tend to withdraw into themselves and make no mention of their experiences even to his or her loved ones.
The decision to dedicate a venue of “Parole Ritrovate” to this theme is meant to foster voice hearers’ dream to live a full life, by reinstating themselves in control over their lives. It is also meant to get an insight of this particular experience and share coping strategies with the person involved. The ultimate aim of “Parole Ritrovate” is to give a voice and first person accounting to those who never experienced this before, or who lost it, get the people to be involved and also let ourselves getting involved, as much as possibile, into social networks made of understanding and feelings.
The purpose of “Parole Ritrovate” is to help people in believing in the all-possible change and seeing not only the problem, but also the resources, giving value and meaningfulness to everybody’s subjectivity. One could just say that doing things together is significant and beautiful, without going any further. But one should believe in this and act accordingly. In all these instances, the psychic disorder and the mental illness recover a place and a dignity in everyday life of all of us, finding out to belong to a community in which everybody is a little more responsible for everyone.

Programme Friday, May 9th, Morning

09.30 Greetings by the authorities.
Daniela Riccò, Health Care Manager, AUSL Reggio Emilia 
Gaddo Maria Grassi, Director of Mental Health Department, Reggio Emilia 
Renzo De Stefani, Parole Ritrovate 

10.00 Welcome! By Area Socialità, Reggio Emilia 

10.15 Cristina Contini, “Us and the Voices” Association 
“Voices: the starting point. Strategies to regain control and cope with the voices”

11.00 Cristiano Castelfranchi, National Research Council, Rome 
“Feeling masters of one’s own life: Empowerment, Ownership, Recovery” 

12.00 Discussion - Chairpersons:
Benedetta Prugnoli, Director, Mental Health Department, Imola 
Elisabetta Negri, Director, Socio-medical activities, AUSL Reggio Emilia 

13.00 Lunch together.

Programme Friday, May 9th, Afternoon

15.00 Delia Francavilla, “L’Orlando Furioso” Association
“Strategies to acquire awareness and power in the recovery process”

15.30 Comparison of experiences. 

17.00 Summary of proceedings 
Yvonne Bonner, Marcello Macario, Gerald Weber 

An exhibition stand shall be available during the day to exchange information, whereabouts, brochures and leaflets of the participating groups & existing Associations of voice hearers at national level, in order to create a network or coordination system to enhance common initiatives, insights of the voice hearing experience and foster the creation of new self-mutual help groups of voice hearers.

Programme Saturday, May 10th, Morning 

09.00 Introduction:
Giovanna Barazzoni, DSM Reggio Emilia, Gloria Zanni, DSM Reggio Emilia 

09.15 “Talking with the voices” 
By self-help group of voice hearers, Reggio Emilia 

10.00 Voice to the short-film made by the Day Centre “Villa Valentini”, Scandiano 

11.00 Ron Coleman
“Experiences in Europe and the World”
Translator: Angelo Arecco 

12.00 Discussion - Chairpersons: 
Antonio Maria Ferro, Director, Mental Health Department, Savona 
Gaddo Maria Grassi, Director, Mental Health Department, Reggio Emilia 
Marco Donnarumma, Association “Sostegno e Zucchero”, Reggio Emilia 
“Building up a Dream” 
Free debate of experiences and agreement to the project of building up a national voice hearers groups network.

13.00 Conclusion of the proceedings and arrangements for future meetings.

Information:
Marcello Macario 

"Voices" an instrumental track by Martin Brotheridge

2008-03-01T19:01:00Z

Updated 01/03/2008

"Voices" an instrumental track composed and produced by Martin Brotheridge. This is an MP3 file, listen with Windows Media Player or ITunes etc ...

Listen to it here

Thanks a lot for sending it to us Martin, it's really good.

Never Never... a poem about hearing voices by Martin Brotheridge

2008-03-01T18:40:00Z

Updated 01/03/2008

Up all night alone with him.
Never does he sleep,
Never does he give in.
Does anyone hear what he says?
The visions of blood carries on for days.
He shows me the future and he drags up the past.
Will he ever stop how long will this last?
Time for my meds to stop this eternal racket,
I welcome the peace of this chemical straight jacket....

by Martin Brotheridge

The Listening Cure, Time/CNN, 21st February 2008

2008-02-22T21:41:00Z

Page updated 21 February 2008

Source: Time/CNN, 21st February 2008

At the age of 7, Peter Bullimore experienced his first auditory hallucination: a comforting voice that told him everything would be all right. By the time he was 10, he recalls, it had turned into 20 "threatening and demonic" voices; over the next two decades, they compelled him to steal, convinced him he was Jesus, and persuaded him to attempt suicide. "They told me to burn in hell, so I bought gasoline and poured it over myself," he says. Years of psychiatric treatment offered no relief, so Bullimore joined a support group for people similarly afflicted. A decade later, he says, he is no longer at the mercy of his voices: "Now, when we argue, it's on my terms and not theirs."
Last month Bullimore, 46, shared his story with about 150 fellow voice hearers at a University of East London conference sponsored by the Hearing Voices Network (HVN), an organization that brings such people together to exchange personal stories and coping strategies. Drawing on research by Dutch psychiatrists indicating that up to one in 25 people hears voices, HVN seeks to recast the phenomenon as a normal experience, encouraging members to maintain a dialogue with their voices so they can live peacefully with and even appreciate their presence. Studies suggest that these auditory hallucinations emerge following traumas ranging from the death of a loved one to outright abuse, so HVN encourages members to address the phenomenon with these origins in mind. In the past six years, HVN in England has doubled its number of support groups to more than 160 local chapters, and similar groups have cropped up in 17 other countries, from Japan to Finland.
The HVN prescription flies in the face of traditional psychiatry, which prefers that patients take antipsychotic medication and ignore their voices, and warns that acknowledging them intensifies hallucinations. But according to Dr. Marius Romme, a psychiatrist and former professor at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, "Accepting voices is the one precondition to start the process of recovery." He argues that the mind uses this internal chatter to alert people to unresolved trauma: studies by Romme and others estimate that 50% of cases have experienced some form of abuse, and their voices tend to take on characteristics of their tormentors. "The road to recovery," says Romme, "involves getting a better view of that relationship."
For Bullimore, that process began at an HVN support group in Sheffield, England, where he first spoke of being tied to a banister and abused by a female babysitter from the age of 5 to 13. He says his dominant voice, which echoes that of the babysitter, incessantly taunted him and suggested that the abuse had aroused him. During 11 years of psychiatric care, Bullimore claims his doctors refused to discuss what his voices were saying. But at HVN meetings he began to answer back, and "to alter the power relationship" with his tormentor.
In about a third of cases, antipsychotic medication helps to reduce distress, but for many it fails, says Dr. Sara Tai, a researcher at the University of Manchester in the U.K. The drugs also leave many patients feeling exhausted and emotionally numb. Audrey Reid, a 36-year-old from Dundee, Scotland, says medication slowed her thinking and rendered her powerless against bullying by her voices. They made sexually demeaning comments and, when she tried to make coffee, convinced her she was brewing poison.
But their effect is not always destructive, and HVN encourages its members to form relationships with them. Reid says four of her seven voices calm her down during stressful situations, help her assess people she meets, and remind her what to buy at the grocery store. One — which she regards as that of herself as a child — even helped her successfully confront another, which she says mimics a man who molested her when she was 8 years old. "I'm not a confrontational person, so I needed her there," she says, noting that while the abuser's voice still occasionally criticizes her, for the most part "he's been put in his place."
Voice hearers must navigate a society that often views them as freaks and potential criminals: Bullimore says he's been spat upon, called a "psycho" and had his face slashed with a broken vase by people who know of his condition. In public, some voice hearers mask internal arguments by appearing to shout into their cell phones. Others wear headphones to drown out the sound, or set up appointments during which the voices can vent at their leisure.
Mainstream psychiatry remains skeptical of HVN's approach. Dr. Cosmo Hallstrom, a fellow at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, says hallucinations are usually symptoms of illness, particularly schizophrenia. He says that people who need psychiatric treatment don't always know it, and worries that support groups like HVN could impede efforts to "combat the scourge of mental illness." Still, he adds that "more than one approach may be valid" and that the real danger may not be hearing voices, but hearing them without some form of support — psychiatric or otherwise.
As for Bullimore, he's convinced that challenging his voices has put his life back on track. He now trains mental-health professionals working with voice hearers, runs a support group and has entered a long-term relationship. Positive voices have appeared, too, he says, waking him at night and reminding him to write down ideas that have become the basis for his first children's book. By listening to what the demons in his past have to say, Bullimore has learned to do more than talk back to the voices: he's managed to find his own.

Alessandra’s Story

2008-02-18T07:17:00Z

Page updated 10/03/2008

My name is Alessandra,

Here is my story from various points of view:

The beginning of my experience: Getting to know Andrea
I was 32 years old at that time. I was married and had become mother of a beautiful child, Dara, when the company I was working for as a secretary moved too far away from where I lived and I decided to resign, I stayed home with Dara until she was 18 months old.

I then decided, (don’t ask me why, an unconscious impulse maybe) to start working as a social worker for a young man called Andrea. (I responded to a request on the radio for someone who could take him to school and help him with homework). He was 19 years old when I first met him.

Andrea was born healthy but because of a vaccination against polio he actually got polio and a cerebral infection that soon led him to end up completely paralyzed and unable to talk.

He spent many years of his childhood considered to be a “vegetable” but his parents took him to the USA and found out, thanks to an organization who look after people like him, that he was very intelligent and able to understand and communicate through the movement of his eyes - the only part of his body at that time under his willing control.

Later on, a cousin of his, a young lady, found out when Andrea was around 11 years old, that by putting a pen in his hand and have his hand held in her hand, Andrea could actually write and communicate. Not everybody managed to assist him to write in this way but he eventually found people who could and attended school like everybody else up to his third year of high school, which was the time when I first met him. My role was to stay with him at school and enable him to write his home work, school tests and help him communicate with his school mates. It is funny how nobody, including his parents, thought that it was actually weird that he, being paralyzed, clinically proven, had managed to move his hands and write! But many people could help him write his thoughts and questions this way.

In any case I did as they told me and had his hand in mine with the pen inside and soon noticed soon that there were some days where I “felt” his hand “pushing and write” and some others where I could not “feel” his hand doing anything and we were not able to talk to each other. He kept writing to me not to give up and relax because he knew that I would be able to write with him and to be able to “feel” what he wished to tell me.

Discovery of telepathy
Once during class time, I wondered (only in my head as a thought ) if he had completed the translation from Latin he was supposed to do two days before. At that point I “felt” his answer together at the same time in my mind and in his hand and he wrote “yes I completed it with my father yesterday”. I was shocked because I was sure that I had not open my mouth and then asked myself as a thought again “My God, is he reading in my mind?” and he wrote yes I am , don’t get scared please..

I didn’t get scared, I was petrified! I let go of his hand and ran out the classroom! It took me a week to be able to stay next to him again and “feel” his writing again. We started talking about his way of communicating. He explained to me that he could not talk and found out as a child overtime an alternative way of having people understand what he wished to say. He also used to call and talk mentally, or telepathically as some people define it. For instance: to his parents during the night when they were sleeping and he needed to be changed or else; he told me he actually communicated mentally with them and not with his hands, but that most people, including his parents would have refused to communicate with him if they had known the way he managed to do it. He also explained to me why I, at times, could hear his thinking and could not at other times. When I was relaxed and not scared my mind worked as a receiver, however when I doubted if the whole thing could work, I would close my channel of communication and capacity to “hear him”. In other words I had to believe in it to have to have it happened.

Therefore I had to decide: whether to go on with this experience and change many of my ideas (I did not believe in telepathy ) and beliefs or just forget about it and do as other people had done, just believe it was his paralyzed hand that could move or not even bother to ask myself how it worked.

I was not a believer in paranormal phenomena; I had grown up in a kind of family where nobody had to believe things that were not scientifically proven. I had no faith in God or life after death, I hated church and priests and many, many times I believed I was going crazy. Telepathy, how can that be? Everyone says it does not exist and yet I was experiencing it and I was not even the only one in that class: three other schoolmates communicated with Andrea that way and they often came to me telling me that Andrea seems to write things as if he knew much more about their personal life that he was supposed to know.

I did not tell anybody else about telepathy for many months as I thought it may scare his friends and did not wish him to be scary to people he liked and also because it was all so crazy for me to believe at times! Since I‘ve always been quite a stubborn person, before accepting telepathy to be a reality for me I asked Andrea for many and various proof . . For example I would have him tell me something telepathically then ask a school mate, Nadia, to write with him what he had just told me. And they wrote it exactly as it was. He then taught me how to communicate with him without the need of the pen held together. It was fun too, we could chat during boring lessons at school without being caught by teachers!! :-)

When he was hospitalized and I had learned by then how to communicate with him telepathically at a distance, I would ask him to give me the rates of his clinical data (oxygen or pressure) which were registered on a book at the hospital and then I used to go and see him at the hospital and check if the rates I was given were correct and they were and so on. I eventually decided I had and wanted to change my previous belief and what the hell believe in what my experience really was despite what everybody else might have said about me.

The spiritual path: If telepathy is possible then maybe other things he was telling me could be possible

Well he started talking to me, affirming that he was like in the middle between the earthly dimension and the spiritual one, that we (all human beings) are all souls incarnated in bodies but that our spiritual essence is much greater than what our 5 senses can tell or perceive. We are all here, living this experience of life on earth, everyone with their own personal experiences, learning various and different things. That we - human beings - are helped all the time by the spiritual world, (weather we perceive them or not) by presences that some people call angels (those who have a catholic imprinting), but that every religion has their own way to describe them or this spiritual dimension. He told me he could not only hear and talk to them but also see them. He could see “my angel/spiritual guide and said that if I wished (and only if wished to do so) I could talk to him the same way I had managed to learn to talk to him.

Even these concepts, were, in the beginning, hard for me to accept, but he had shown me and proved that we could communicate telepathically so, maybe it was worthwhile listening to him about others things he affirmed. I want to point out that he NEVER forced me to believe in something. He always respected my will and waited until I decided to know more about it before telling me about spiritual things or about his voices if you prefer to refer to them that way. And in any case he always pointed out that I - as every one else - had the right to have whatever point of view I wished to have. He respected all religions, even if some how he would point out limits of each one. He would state things of this sort: human truths are many - God's truth is only one His only dogma was: God exists. He was not willing to doubt that, no way, I could believe what I wished but he was certain of that.

Some contents of Andrea's opinions and of my voices/spiritual guides too
We started having arguments and interesting conversations about God and his way of perceiving God. He strongly believed in Him, but the God he “described me” was so different from the kind of God I had been told! It was a God of Love that would welcome us at the end of our life always with love. No hell , no terrible judgment, no punishment . According to what he believed in, souls come to earth to learn what they wished to learn and bring the message they want to others.

According to his vision (and to mine too at the moment) there is no such thing as sins. If human beings make mistakes, they just experience the consequences of some actions and can do better if they wish to other times. Souls simply acknowledge what they managed to do during their experience of life on earth and in relation to what they had decided to learn from life before incarnating and after death they know more about themselves and may do better in other experiences if they wished to do so.

Hell is not a place, it is a state of mind that may occur to souls when they are too far away from Love/God. He added that we are not lonely in our difficult and rich experience of life, from the spiritual dimension we are constantly helped by good souls. That God always help us going along the path we asked for. Some events we go through are decided by the soul before incarnating. We will all come back home to Love sooner or later. What we learn from a certain experience and some steps we decide to take after are up to us instead. For example it was decided we would meet, but it was up to me to go on exploring this experience and believe in it or not.

Andrea and I became closer and closer, the more I knew him, the more my life was changing and becoming richer and my vision of life so much better, sufferance, pain, and all the bad things that happen in life started making sense to me, even the bad ones I had to go through in my childhood. My vision of the meaning of life, thanks to him, changed. Actually, thanks to him and my different way of seeing life, Life made sense finally to me.

He taught me how to talk to my “spiritual guide”, my angel, as Christians would call it, or my voice as others may call it. I spent a year asking my spirit lots of questions. I wrote them down in a diary as I would write down my conversations with Andrea. I fell in love with him deeply, not of course in way I could consider him a boyfriend, but I certainly loved him with all my heart and I will always be grateful to him because he taught me about Love, God’s Love and allowed me to start a new personal spiritual path that means so much to me and it is of a great help in my life even in difficult moment I gave to go through.

Andrea “died” in 1995 for a very severe bronchitis. During the 4 months in hospital I was always next to him. He could even see a person who was lying down on a bed next him being ready to leave his material body and go to the spiritual life. He knew he would die before the machines would tell doctors this would happen. He had told me I could become a natural healer (I did not believe in alternative medicines but I years later found out I was a natural healer and I could help many friends that way). A year after he had died my mother was sick with a cancer. Doctors did not know how long she would have lived, maybe just months. She was suffering so much I was crying one day and prayed and asked Andrea to tell me how long she had to suffer that way: Andrea told me “she’s running fast towards love and light.. 5 days dear, no more”. I had a sort of a vision that she would die with her hand in mine on the fifth day, in the morning when my father used to go (I generally went to see her in the afternoon) my father’s car broke down so he asked me to go and see her in the morning in his place. I went and she died that very day, with her hand in mine.

Since then, various other special things have occurred to me, but I don't think this is the right context to tell them. What I experienced certainly reinforced my belief in God and life after death, but I don't wish to convince the whole world that my truth is universal . It is my truth and personal conviction.

I certainly don’t care anymore about what anybody else says about my belief . I believe in God, and in life after life even if I know that our mind is too narrow minded to understand how complex the whole Devine truth is this is my present belief.

I still talk to Andrea when I wish to. He always come to me and comforts me. I talk to my spiritual guides too when I wish to. My life is much happier than before I met Andrea. I will always love him dearly.

THE same story seen from the medical point of view:
If I tell this story to a psychiatrist (a narrow minded one) I would certainly get a diagnosis of schizophrenia or similar and get a lots of medications to get rid of my voices.

The same story: if you consider trama as connected with the experience of hearing voices
With my patients, I see that it is almost always possible to see a close connection between their experience of hearing voices, what the voices tell them and the traumas that occurred in their life. In this sense I must say I can well be put into this category too. I had without a doubt a very hard childhood and for sure experienced psychological and physical trauma. I was born 3 months premature, spent my first year of life in a hospital and many more in and out of hospitals with health problems.

My mother had had a very bad childhood and became very depressed and an alcoholic. She would become very violent when she drank and both physically but above all psychologically abused me and my sister. She also tried to sexually abuse me when I was 14 (in the sense that she tried to touch me and had a very morbid attitude and interest in my personal sexual behavior. I don’t remember anything at all of my life before the age of nine. So I suppose some kind of trauma also occurred before that age. My sister remembers an uncle who tried to abuse of her sexually in the sense that she remembers him mostly touching her under her skirt and touching me too while pretending to be “the good uncle”. I don’t remember anything about that, it may be, but as I said my mind goes blank if I tried to remember who I was, what I did or what they did to me before the age of nine.

My father, a very intelligent and calm man, loved my mother a lot, but was not able to protect us from her. He would assist in the violence we were subjected to without defending us; he actually would be very sorry for us, but in the end would just come to us and ask us to forgive mommy and say to her we were sorry even if we were right, because she was sick.

I saw my mother destroying herself and her life every day for years. She used to be lively and intelligent but by the time I was 10 she had ended up for months and months, closed up lying on a bed drinking , arguing and watching TV, suffering a lot and for the years that followed, up to her death, she kept telling us we were the reason for her unhappiness She told us she was unhappy because we did not obey her or because we wished to go out and be independent or because she had to looked after us and sacrificed herself for us, instead of doing something for herself, and so on.

In the final years I had managed to have a better relationship with her, being married and having moved out of her house and in control of my life, but at that point I became the mother and she became the daughter, calling me everyday for support. Of course I loved her and hated her at the same time. She died a year after Andrea died and in some respect I started becoming free from this point in my life.

I forgave her, I believe, for what she had done to me, but it took me years and years to do it. She was very nasty to us, but certainly she did not realize all the pain she was causing us. She did not know how to get her life back and probably she had a lot of anger towards herself too, that she could not accept and threw it out on to us. These were times when depression and being an alcoholic was kept as a private problem and not spoken about to other people.

Profile of my voices
So yes, I had traumas and yes I ended up somehow hearing voices.

How many voices?
Mainly the one of my beloved Andrea plus the one I call my spiritual guide's voice (Quintin).

I know there are another two voices (Guido and Patricia), I can talk to them if I wish to, but I generally don’t because they told me that they are next to me, to help me when I practice natural healing (when I do it I do it more or less like Barbara Brennand does it – I don't know if you know her - she is a doctor /physic who became a natural healer and has a school in USA where she teaches people how to get in touch with spiritual guides in order to heal people).

Are they male or female?
Andrea is a male voice, the same as he had when he was alive. My spiritual guide has a male voice and his name is Quintin, the other two are male and female. They never command, never impose their will on me, they mostly help my think about things from a very positive point of view and support me most of the time. They pray with me if I asked them to, to help people who are in difficult situations. Andreas’ voice is not only a voice. he has a special way of making me feel his presence, a sweet warm feeling around me and he knows how to make me feel in what part of the room he is. Sometimes I also felt his “touch” under my chin, something he also used to do when he was alive.

Have I ever had bad voices?
Not really, only once I happened to receive some insults. I told Andrea (who was alive at that time) and asked for help and I got rid of it. Another time, (right at the beginning of my strange experiences) I was in the underground and heard many, many voices which were trying to talk to me all together. They were not nasty, they were like excited that they had found someone who could hear them and asked me to refer the things they were telling me to some people in the underground. Some of them I managed to understand, they were willing to have some relatives that were there in the underground to be reassured about the fact they were fine and alive in “heaven”. But I did not like all that mess of voices, it was confusing, even if they were gentle. ]

Andrea suggested me to ask them gently (in the name of God) to leave me in peace and that the only entities I wanted to talk to were my three spiritual guides. If they were good souls, as he thought, they would just respect my wshes and go away. I did so and they never bothered me anymore.

If they insist, despite your wishes – he said – and ask you to do things you don’t want to do, they are probably souls of a “lower spiritual level” who have not yet understood the nature of God: if this situation occurs, he suggested I had to pray with the help of my spiritual guides and I would protect myself from them. I did it and it worked.

I never had problems anymore with “bad voices” since then. And that was almost 12 years ago. I now talk to Andrea when I wish, it could be every 3/6 months or once a week if I’m going through a very difficult time. His father and his mother also have learned to talk to their son Andrea telepathically. His friend Nadia (his school mate at high school ) does it too. His friend Gabriella does it too. Some other people hear him too.

Andrea’s fine, he has a lot to do “up there” so I don’t bother him that often. I have a lot to do down here too.

So that’s my story believe it or not.

You can see me as a voice hearer who has voices because of traumas
You can see me as a schizophrenic
You can see me as a girl with a lot of imagination

Maybe traumas allow a person to use some other senses that generally people don't use, but have. Maybe I will find out one day that Andrea's voice or my spiritual guide's voices are just part of my deepest spiritual inner side I don't know about. The fact is, they are not a problem for me, in fact just the opposite.

I see myself as a very lucky person who has had the possibility to meet a very special young man and special soul who taught me through his example of life that God's love exists and that I can learn a lot in this difficult and fascinating journey that life is.