-
By Will Hall Paperback 402 pages -
By Hanne Arts Paperback 218 pages -
By Claire Bien Paperback 272 pages -
Director/Producer PJ Moynihan Producer Oryx Cohen Executive Producer Gayle R. Berg, PhD -
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
-
Electronic version available
By Daniel Fisher, MD, PhD
I hope for a day when: Every person who experiences extreme emotional states is engaged in respectful, hopeful, humanistic, and empowering relationships that enable them to heal and recover full, meaningful lives in the community. Instead of being seen as threats to society, we will be seen as a source of wisdom that we have obtained through our recovery. Practices like Open Dialogue will eliminate the long-term iatrogenic effects of a prophesy of doom and lifelong illness. Suffering will be seen as an understandable human response to trauma rather than a chemical imbalance or a defective fear circuit. Voluntary, community-based, recovery-oriented, culturally attuned, traumainformed services and housing will replace psychiatric hospitals. The mental health system will be run by persons with lived experience of recovery from extreme emotional states. Everyone will learn how to assist each other through extreme emotional states by learning communication skills such as Emotional CPR.
