Hearing Voices Movement: how we work together
Updated 07/11/2007
INTERVOICE works differently from many other organisations, we regard ourselves as an alliance of people who share a common cause, in this article we explain why.
Working in partnership:
Bridging the personal and professional:
Incorporating the knowledge of experts by experience:
Participation helps individual recovery processes, including for workers:
Encouraging diverse understandings:
Psychosis Seminars: The Trialogical Approach:
Useful links:
Working in partnership: Experts by training (workers and academics etc) and people who are experts by experience are encouraged to work together, this means that national representatives from the 19 hearing voices initiatives around the world are invited to our annual working meetings as “pairs” or "groups". The expectation is that these pairings/groups are ongoing long-term working relationships (as in working together as equals) that continue outside of the meetings and that the couple/group prepare their presentations together. The advantage of this arrangement is that the perspectives of both the expert by experience and expert by training are included in all discussions and thereby feed into the decision making processes of the organisation.
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Bridging the personal and professional: The belief that we do not need to maintain a worker/psychiatric survivor divide has been a very significant contribution to the success of INTERVOICE as an organisation and sets it apart from many other agencies and services working on mental health issues. The process is simple and involves the members (experts of experience and experts by training) committing themselves to bridging the worker/psychiatric survivor divide and developing real relationships with each other, as a result long term friendships have subsequently developed. This is more easily accomplished than might be imagined, having common cause and placing a stress on the equal value of everyones participation tends to breakdown the worker/psychiatric survivor user divide and gives space for a very different way of working and being together.
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Incorporating the knowledge of experts by experience: We recognise people who hear voices have significant knowledge, although often have few opportunities to disseminate their knowledge. A key function of INTERVOICE is to develop experiential knowledge and to disseminate this with the objective of transforming mental health care to recovery and resilience oriented support. In our view experiential knowledge is equal to scientific knowledge. Persons with “psychiatric histories” own this knowledge and its value, including financial value should be recognised. For example, when voice hearers speak at workshops and conferences, we ensure they are paid the same fees as preofessional speakers (for instance psychiatrists).
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Participation helps individual recovery processes: and this, most especially, includes experts by training: Participation in INTERVOICE by experts by experience has proved to be beneficial to those involved including the experts by training, in effect the community development and educational approach has proved to have had unintended therapeutic value. For example experts by training have revealed that they have heard voices for the first time and experts by experience have been able to support them.
We repeatedly point out that we work together with people with histories of so called severe mental health problems, “the real patients”, in the language of mainstream mental health. This is significant for two reasons, firstly this is because articulate, coping voice hearers tend to be written out of the story as unlike “real patients” and secondly because, although people often join INTERVOICE with a “diagnosis” as their identity, the process of membership often leads to significant change in peoples’ perception of themselves as contributors and as whole people.
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Encouraging diverse understandings: A key approach of INTERVOICE is the focus on seeking to change societies attitudes about hearing voices and the belief that this will lead to a change in psychiatry (we use the analogy with homosexuality and psychiatry). The group considers personal, political and spiritual understandings re. voices as having equal validity and invite presentations from anthropologists, spiritualists, psychiatrists, psychologists, voice hearers etc. We use poetry, music, dance to intstill a creative atmosphere at the meetings and enjoy a meal together at the end of meetings. We value and recognise participation in meetings with tokens of gratitude such as flowers and small gifts. We always meets in non-Medical settings, often in “valued” buildings, most memorably perhaps was a meeting held in the ancient Town hall in Florence.
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Psychosis Seminars: The Trialogical Approach: Many of these ways of working are shared by the Psychosis Seminar movement in Germany. The Seminars are "trialogical" meetings, which means that psychosis-experienced people, their relatives and friends, and professionals from the mental health sector meet up to discuss issues concerning psychosis. Everybody is considered an expert of their experiences and everybody’s different perspectives on psychotic states are valued as equally meaningful and important.
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Useful links:
Expert advice?
Service users and patients are now heralded as "experts by experience", and one project is collating user expertise from around Europe with the aim of producing a qualification enabling users to work in mental health. But is it all worth the time and investment, asks Adam James from Psychminded
Ex-In
(EXperienced INvolvement) is a pilot project funded by the european Leonardo da Vinci Program. The project aims at the qualification of people with lived experiences in mental health distress to work as a supporter in mental health services or as a trainer for mental health professionals. In the frame of the project experienced people, mental health professionals and trainers from six european countries are working together to develop a specific training which is focused on the experiences of the participants.
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More about INTERVOICE here