Hearing Voices

Although there are many people who ‘hear voices’ and are able to live functional lives, there are others for whom ‘hearing voices’ can create turmoil and emotional distress. Our Western approach to people who hear voices has been dictated by the psychiatric medical model. This model seeks to eradicate the voices as quickly as possible without paying ANY attention to the content and deeming any meaning of this content, as well as the experience itself, as null. People experiencing voices are forced to be on medication despite the harsh side effects, as well as having to live with the stigma that these experiences elicit. This approach sees the cause of the voices as biological, assuming pathology, and relegating voices to symptoms of an illness. However, there is a growing movement of people who see ‘voice hearing’ as a meaningful experience that can be understood in terms of the person’s life experiences.

In the 1980s Professor Marius Romme and Dr. Sandra Escher, while working with voice hearers, started to look at voice hearing through a different lens. They realized that voice hearing was a common experience and that by accepting the voices instead of trying to drown them out with medications, the messages could be heard, often proving to have a deep level of meaning to the person hearing them. This can be seen from these quotes from Intervoice. A World Hearing Voices Congress is held annually with the support of Intervoice, bringing together people who hear voices, family members, supporters, mental health professionals, researchers, and academics.

Intervoice, talks about ignoring the content of ‘voices’:

“This turns out not only to be bad advice, but actually counterproductive, as such approaches disempower the voice hearer by denying to them their real experience and disarming them from taking on the voices and standing up for themselves. The new approach requires the voice hearer to make space for the voices, to listen but not to necessarily follow, to engage, but in their own time and space essentially to learn how to control them in their own terms, according to their own beliefs and explanatory framework. This acceptance of the voices is crucial to growth and resolution, voice hearers who have learned these techniques can now say “I hear voices, they are part of me and I am glad they are” Intervoice – exploring the meaning of voices.