Children hearing voices study 1996 - 2001, The Guardian, 16/11/2001
Last updated 11/06/2007
Extract from the Guardian (UK) Newspaper, 16/11/2001
A groundbreaking four-year study of 80 children aged between eight and 18 by researchers at Maastricht University in Holland, may well change both public and professional attitudes about voices.
Although 40 of the children were receiving mental health care when the research began, this number more than halved to 18 after four years - challenging the traditional view that voices are a sign of long-term illness.
The study was led by one of Europe's most eminent psychiatrists, Professor Marius Romme, researcher Sandra Escher and psychologist Alex Buiks, who first proposed that voices should be treated as real experiences rather than delusions.
After interviewing hundreds of adult voice hearers in the 1990s - many of whom had no mental health diagnosis - Romme and Escher concluded that many people could learn to control disturbing voices if they talked back to them.
They decided to examine voice hearing in children as many patients revealed that their voices had first emerged in childhood. The aim was to see whether early therapeutic intervention could prevent people from being labelled with a diagnosis and condemned to spending years in the psychiatric system.
For graph of progress of children during study click here
For review of the research study click here
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I'm a 44 year old single Mother. I have a 13 year old daughter that has just started to be helped by a psychiatrist and a therapist. Apparently she started having mental health issues with depression. The depression worsened over the course of 2 years. To the point of self harm. She began cutting herself. She was hearing strange sounds at first. She described it as havoc and mayhem. She reports hearing bombing and fires and screaming and terrible sounds. Now she's explaining a certain mans voice that tells her to kill herself. This is so disturbing to us as you could well imagine. We started out getting her some therapy with a Mental Health Therapist. Now she's been on Prozac and now Seroquel at bedtime. We first started with 10mgs of Prozac and over 12 weeks, her dosage has been raised to 40 Mg's. We have just started with Seroquel today 25 Mg's. I'm writing to see if there is anyone else with this situation. I really would like some advice and knowledge on this subject. I'm so worried and want to make all the RIGHT decisions...Any comments would help. Thank you, Sincerely, Kelly (Victoria British Columbia, Canada)