“Stories of Hearing Voices: Restoring human experience to communities”

In the build up to the first World Hearing Voices Day a 3 day international conference was held in Manchester UK on the 6th, 7th and 8th of September.

During the course of this highly successful event, three major initiatives were presented:

The announcement of World Hearing Voices Day on September 14th

The launch of CASL: The campaign for the abolition of the schizophrenia label.

The formation of a European Association for Democratic Psychiatry (also to be known as the International Association for Democratic Communities.)

The conference had been called to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Asylum, an international magazine for democratic psychiatry, psychology, education and community development.
It was also the 15th anniversary of the Hearing Voices Network: a network of self-help groups which has transformed the understanding of mental experience and provided for recovery from psychotic conditions.

Julie Downs speaking for the Hearing Voices Network said:
“The research started by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher twenty years ago in the Netherlands is now accepted and developed in the mainstream throughout the world. It suggests that hearing voices is a human variation that does not need to result in an illness. Social presumptions about hearing voices are negative and are not based on the experience of voice hearers. These assumptions are stigmatizing, isolating and offer no hope of recovery, therefore making people ill. Members of hearing voices networks in at least fourteen different countries are organising events on September 14th to open a public debate.

Paul Hammersley from the University of Manchester stated:
“The concept of Schizophrenia has outlived its usefulness. It has become scientifically worthless, is neither valid nor reliable and tells us nothing about cause, prognosis or suitable treatment options for individual service users. Worse still, it is a highly stigmatizing diagnostic category that labels individuals as chronically ill, potentially violent and beyond hope, none of which are true. This ‘label’ is not only unhelpful in our understanding of psychological distress, but actually harmful and reduces people’s chance of recovery. The Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology, under pressure from users and families groups recognised this fact in 2002 and formally abandoned the concept of schizophrenia, recognising that it was associated with deep rooted negative prejudice and the inhumane treatment of those with this diagnosis. The new term `Togo shitcho sho’ (Integration disorder), has been welcomed by both service users and professionals. There are now ample reasons for starting a public debate towards a more reasonable use of language in the UK.”

Editor of Asylum, community psychologist Dr Terence McLaughlin added:
“The commentator Jonathan Freedland was right to suggest that we are on the verge of the last great civil rights movement. In fact the time is now ripe to put an end to what we have come to call psychophobia. The practical and theoretical knowledge and above all the independent community resources are available to put in place real democratic processes. Furthermore this same call is being heard from all around the world. The new international association will be open equally to both `experts by experience’ and `experts by training’. It will herald a new beginning by bringing together international energies for positive change.”

Further information can be obtained from:

Hearing Voices Network UK
Paul Hammersley
Terence McLaughlin