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Hearing Voices that are Distressing: A Simulated Training Experience and Self-Help Strategies
Just as rehabilitation students gain insight into the experience of physical disability by using wheelchairs, so too can mental health professionals and students experience a simulation of some of the challenges facing people with psychiatric disabilities. Who should attend this training? This training has been developed and piloted for a wide range of people including: inpatient/outpatient psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, social workers and psychologists; direct care workers in residential, day treatment and psychosocial rehabilitation programs; mental health administrators and policy makers; family members and friends; and academic faculty and students. A modified version of this training emphasizing self help skill building (and no simulation experience) is available for voice hearers who want to learn to control or eliminate distressing voices. Hearing voices that are distressing is a training in which participants use headphones for listening to a specially designed audiotape. During this simulated experience of hearing voices, participants undertake a series of tasks including social interaction in the community, a psychiatric interview, cognitive testing, and an activities group in a mock day treatment program. The simulation experience is followed by a debriefing and discussion period. The workshop also includes:- A lecture exploring the research and literature on hearing distressing voices
- Presentation of self-help strategies for coping with or eliminating distressing voices
- Practice exercises where participants learn to teach self-help skills to voice hearer
- To empathize more deeply with the challenges voice hearers face
- To reduce the fear and stigma surrounding the voice hearing experience
- To learn to teach self help skills to voice hearers
Call the National Empowerment Center at 1-800-769-3728 for more information
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Director/Producer PJ Moynihan Producer Oryx Cohen Executive Producer Gayle R. Berg, PhD -
By Claire Bien Paperback 272 pages -
By Hanne Arts Paperback 218 pages -
By Will Hall Paperback 402 pages -
Research studies, articles and book excerpts on recovery. All compiled into one publication!
This publication dispels the myth that people labeled with mental illness need to lead lives of endless desperation and broken dreams. Inspire a new generation of consumers, caregivers, administrators, and families! -
Electronic version availableBy Patricia Deegan, PhD
Self-help strategies for people who hear voices that are distressing
This self-help guide can help you gain control over or eliminate voices that are distressing. The 22 page booklet, includes 18 fully illustrated self-help strategies that can help you take a stand, find your own voice and reach your goals! -
Electronic version available
Developed with the assistance of diverse leaders from across the U.S.
Emotional CPR is a public health education program designed to teach people the skills to assist others through emotional crisis and regain a sense of hope and purpose in their lives. This workbook was developed for the eCPR certification training and provides a thoughtful discussion of the values of eCPR, the features of dialogue, and the primary components of eCPR: C = Connection, P = emPowering, and R = Revitalizing. Other sections include how to prepare oneself to provide eCPR as well as tips for self-care. The workbook is filled with inspiring quotes, real-life examples of embodying the practice of eCPR, sample instructions for role plays, and other exercises. The workbook is designed for anyone who may encounter a person in emotional crisis – law enforcement, mental health peers, mental health providers, family members, and others. If you are interested in learning more about eCPR, or would like to request an eCPR training, please visit www.emotional-cpr.org.
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By Daniel Mackler
Healing Homes, a feature-length documentary film directed by Daniel Mackler, chronicles the work of the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden -- a program which, in this era of multi-drug cocktails and psychiatric diagnoses-for-life, helps people recover from psychosis without medication. The organization, backed by over twenty years of experience, places people who have been failed by traditional psychiatry in host families -- predominately farm families in the Swedish countryside -- as a start for a whole new life journey. Host families are chosen not for any psychiatric expertise, rather, for their compassion, stability, and desire to give back. People live with these families for upwards of a year or two and become an integral part of a functioning family system. Staff members offer clients intensive psychotherapy and provide host families with intensive supervision. The Family Care Foundation eschews the use of diagnosis, works within a framework of striving to help people come safely off psychiatric medication, and provides their services, which operate within the context of Swedish socialized medicine, for free. Healing Homes weaves together interviews with clients, farm families, and staff members to create both a powerful vision of medication-free recovery and an eye-opening critique of the medical model of psychiatry. -
Electronic version available
Note: The Hearing Voices Curriculum is now available as a virtual training. For some suggestions on how to conduct this training virtually, click here.
Learn more about the Updated Hearing Voices Curriculum in the video below.
Originally created by Patricia Deegan, PhD with updates by Dr. Dan Fisher and Oryx Cohen
WHAT IS IT?
Hearing Voices That Are Distressing is a complete training/curriculum package in which participants use headphones for listening to a specially designed recording. During this simulated experience of hearing voices, participants undertake a series of tasks including social interaction in the community, a psychiatric interview, cognitive testing, and an activities group in a mock day treatment program. The simulation experience is followed by a debriefing and discussion period. The curriculum includes an updated DVD and updated discussion questions that focus on what we can do to support people who hear voices."...The first graduate students who experienced 'Hearing Voices' said it changed their lives. We now require it for all our graduate students in sites across the country." ~ Paul J. Carling, Ph.D. Executive Director The Center for Community Change, Trinity College, Vermont "...The voices simulation gave me a good overview of what people who do hear voices go through on a day to day basis." "...Incredible experience which gave a great insight. " "...Every Officer should have this experience so they can understand what people who hear voices are going through." ~ Law Enforcement Officers from Utah CIT AcademiesWHO BENEFITS FROM THIS TRAINING?
This curriculum has been developed and piloted for a wide range of mental health professionals including: Inpatient/outpatient psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, social workers; psychologists; direct care workers in residential, day treatment and psychosocial rehabilitation programs; mental health administrators, policy makers; and police officers, academic faculty and students."...I recently participated in the 'Hearing Voices' training. I must confess, I was disturbed by the sudden realization that I have been treating schizophrenia for four years, yet I have never known what it really was. I may have had the knowledge, but not the wisdom or true empathy -Â until now." ~ Jim Willow, M.D. Psychiatric Resident, PsycHealth Centre, Winnipeg, ManitobaSample a sound byte from the hearing voice simulation (mp3, 1843 KB) Please be advised: Contains mild profanities
WHO CREATED IT?
Patricia E. Deegan, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and developed this curriculum as part of her work with the National Empowerment Center. She also publishes and lectures internationally on the topics of recovery and empowerment. Pat is a person with a psychiatric disability, who also has experience hearing voices that are distressing. -
By Daniel Mackler
In the far north of Finland, a stone's throw from the Arctic Circle, a group of innovative family therapists converted the area's traditional mental health system, which once boasted some of Europe's poorest outcomes for schizophrenia, into one that now gets the best statistical results in the world for first-break psychosis. They call their approach Open Dialogue. Their principles, though radical in this day and age of multi-drug cocktails and involuntary hospitalizations, are surprisingly simple. They meet clients in crisis immediately and often daily until the crises are resolved. They avoid hospitalization and its consequential stigma, preferring to meet in the homes of those seeking their services. And, perhaps most controversially, they avoid the use of anti-psychotic medication wherever possible. They also work in groups, because they view psychosis as a problem involving relationships. They include in the treatment process the families and social networks of those seeking their help, and their clinicians work in teams, not as isolated, sole practitioners. Additionally, their whole approach values of the voice of everyone in the process, most especially the person directly in crisis. And finally, they provide their services, which operate within the context of Finnish socialized medicine, for free. Open Dialogue weaves together interviews with psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and journalists to create both a powerful vision of medication-free recovery and a hard-hitting critique of traditional psychiatry.
