Hi Caroline

I think your observations are so true.

So often people who work in mental health are encouraged to distance themselves from their clients, indeed it is sometimes said that this is important because someone who cannot maintain the right level of distance may make professional mistakes. I’ve also heard people say they have to do it otherwise they would “burn out” or suffer from “compassion fatigue”.

Clearly these agendas arise mainly for workers who owe their professional loyalty to the organisation they work for rather then the clients they serve. This is an age old problem and one of the effects it has is that many experts by training/profession end up becoming something they don’t want to be and don’t really know how to get out of the trap except by leaving the work completely.

I remember that coincidentally, you and I met someone just like that, who told us she wanted to retrain and go and work with animals because of the disonnance between what she wanted to do in mental health services and what she could do.

What is so good about the hearing voices conferences and INTERVOICE meetings I’ve been to, is that kind of attitude is turned on its head, I’m not sure if its the way the meetings are organised, who speaks, who attends, the topics we talk about or what … but the effect seems to be that by being involved workers often find they can rediscover why they got involved in mental health services in the first place and return to their workplaces with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

It could be said that unintentionally(?) the hearing voices movement has become not only a place where voice hearers can find there own ways to recover, but in a way where workers are finding ways to recover too! Recovering a more human way of relating to the people they work with.

Paul Baker