Saturday, July 13

Hearing voices: recovery is possible



There are many groups of people who recovered from mental or emotional problems out of the mainstream treatment offered by health care.
When someone claims that is hearing voices they usually go to a psychiatry, are labeled schizophrenic and start having all kind of medications that don't help.
Some go straight to a mental institution a place where numerous crimes against humanity are committed.
There are other approaches and it comes from people who have recovered are dedicating their work to helping other. The outcome is usually far more efficacious than what psychiatry has to offer.
Rudus May explains at the video how he helps one of his clients using a puppet "Top Dog", He also heard voices and suffered at mental institutions. But, as many, he recovered and became a clinical psychologist.
He validates the voice and do make sense to what they are doing and, amazing, sometimes even the harsh words is a way the voices find to protect the one who listen them.

I found this book and copied a tiny part of the introduction:
Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery.  Marcus Romme, Sandra Escher, Jacqui Dillon, Dirk Corstens, Mervyn Morris (Editors)

"From understanding the perspective of the voice hearer, we have observed that the attitude of mental healthcare researchers and professionals is one of regarding voices not as a source of information, but as a sign of 'non-existent' reality; it is the attitude that disables people from finding more adequate and helpful information about this experience.

Mental health care should start from the experience of the voice hearer.
Effective care should follow the same process as the voice hearers who have recovered. It begins with accepting the undeniable presence of the voices, proceeds to the necessary change of relationship with them, then to finding a fulfilling role in society again, and ultimately to recovery from the distress associated with the voices again, and ultimately to recovery from the distress associated with the voices. in various ways the voice hearers in this book have shown this to be the pathway to recovery.

With the fifty stories in this book we hope to help you realise not only how important the voices are in the process of recovery, but also the problems that lay at their roots. All the people in this book have had not only serious problems coping with their voices, but also serious other problems related to their voices.

As you read the stories you will see certain themes emerge. For example,  voice hearers who have taken their lives back into their own hands, not only have recovered themselves but have also used their experience to help other voice hearers with their own recovery process and, further on, have made a career in this area."

You can read a sample of the book here..