The Hearing Voices Approach, as advocated by the Hearing Voices Movement, organizations and individuals is a way of understanding the experience of those people who "hear voices" or have other unusual experiences. In the medical professional literature, ‘voices’ are most often referred to as auditory hallucinations. The movement uses the term ‘voices’, which it feels is a more accurate and ‘user-friendly’ term.

 

The movement was instigated by Marius Romme, Sandra Escher and Patsy Hage in 1987.

It challenges the notion that to hear voices is necessarily a characteristic of mental illness. Instead it regards hearing voices as a meaningful and understandable, although unusual, human variation. It therefore rejects the stigma and pathologisation of hearing voices and advocates human rights, social justice and support for people who hear voices that is empowering and recovery focussed.

 

The position of the hearing voices movement can be summarised as follows:

 

• Hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness.

• Hearing voices is experienced by many people who do not have symptoms that would lead to diagnosis of mental illness.

• Hearing voices is often related to problems in life history.

• If hearing voices causes distress, the person who hears the voices can learn strategies to cope with the experience. Coping is often achieved by confronting the past problems that lie behind the experience.

 

 

 

 

References:

 

 

Hague Patsy: Co-founder". intervoiceonline.org. 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2014.

 

Longden E, Corstens D, Dillon J. (2013). Recovery, discovery and revolution: the work of Intervoice and the hearing voices movement. In: Coles S, Keenan S, Diamond B , eds. Madness Contested: Power and Practice. Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS.

 

McCarthy-Jones, S. (2013). Hearing Voices - The Histories, Causes and Meanings of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

 

Romme, M. & Escher, S. (1993). Accepting Voices: A New Analysis of the Experience of Hearing Voices Outside the Illness Model, Mind Publications.

 

Romme, M., Escher, S., Dillo, J., Corstens, D. & Morris, M. (2009). Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery, PCCS Books/Birmingham City University.