Letter

Talking sense

Dear healthmatters — The creation of the ‘hearing voices’ movement is, I feel, one of the most important developments in the politics of mental health for several years.

In 1988 Professor Marius Romme of the University of Limberg in Holland appeared on a popular Dutch TV show with Patsy Hage, a woman who heard voices and had managed to convince Professor Romme to take these voices seriously. Standard psychiatric procedure — then as now — in Holland and Britain was not to attempt to understand or explore the individual experience of hearing voices, but merely to treat them as a symptom of schizophrenia.

Several hundred people who heard voices contacted Romme after the programme and were sent questionnaires. Many of these people had had no contact with mental health services and did not realise that their experience was considered a problem by psychiatry. A self-help movement called Resonance was set up after a conference, and continues to grow in Holland.

This led Romme to put forward the idea that ‘hearing voices’ in itself is not pathological and should not be considered a symptom of anything. He suggested that ‘hearing voices’ is a behavioural variation no more deviant than being left handed or homosexual, and that many of the problems caused to people who hear voices, and the reasons why so many do seek psychiatric help, is due to the profound stigmatisation and misunderstanding that they suffer.

Two things are needed. First, research into hearing voices, which takes seriously peoples’ experience. Second, if society’s attitudes are going to change then a liberation movement of people who hear voices is essential, in some ways parallel to the gay movement which successfully managed to take homosexuality out of the realm of psychiatry and into the ordinary political world.

There are now self-help groups in Manchester, London and Plymouth, as well as a national newsletter and the beginnings of a network. Many public meetings and two conferences have been held which have excited a great deal of interest — unfortunately mainly limited to the world of psychiatry so far.

If any of your readers wish to know more, and especially if they hear voices themselves, then please contact me at Hearing Voices, c/o MCVS, Fourways House, 57 Hilton St, Manchester.