Community Newswire, 14/09/2007

An organisation dedicated to supporting people who hear voices is today staging an international awareness day to help combat the secrecy and stigma surrounding the issue.

The second annual World Hearing Voices Day will aim to show that hearing voices - also known as auditory hallucinations - should be considered part of human diversity and not as a sign of mental illness.

It is being organised by Intervoice (the International Network for training, education and research into Hearing Voices), a movement pioneered 20 years ago by Dutch psychiatrist Marius Romme.

In 1987, Professor Romme was inspired to start an organisation to support people who hear voices after one of his patients, Patsy Hage, criticised his clinical approach to her "voices".

She urged him to help her learn to cope with the experience of hearing voices instead of looking at it as an illness.

Professor Romme said: "In 1987, I had no idea the impact that the discovery that accepting and making sense of voices was a helpful alternative was going to have.

"Yet, after 20 years of work we have built a unique and formidable movement of voice hearers and allies that has brought about a big change in the way hearing voices are regarded and has found new ways of helping people overwhelmed by their voices."

An estimated 4% of people around the world hear voices, according to Intervoice.

It is hoped World Hearing Voices Day will help to reassure those who keep their experiences of hearing voices to themselves and to challenge negative attitudes towards them.

As part of the awareness day, a conference organised by wellbeing charity Together is being held in London today to bring together professionals and people with experience of hearing voices.

Launching World Hearing Voices Day, Professor Romme said: "Typically, in Western medical thinking hearing voices has always been associated with mental illness and frequently seen as a symptom of schizophrenia.

"Yet, we discovered many people who hear voices do not have a mental illness and never seek help.

"For this reason we are prepared to accept a range of explanations offered by people who hear voices, including spiritual ones, and believe it is essential to the process of recovery from overwhelming voices to understand the meaning of the voices to the voice hearer."

He continued: "We are finding more holisitic solutions to voices that cause mental distress than those offered by psychiatry. It is very important to stress that, in our view, voices are an aspect of human differentness, rather than a mental health problem.

"As with homosexuality, which was also regarded by psychiatry in recent times as an illness, the main issue we have to confront is the denial of the human rights to people who hear voices and our main task is to change the way society perceives the experience.

"Only if can we do this, do we believe psychiatry will change its mind about voices. That is why holding a World Hearing Voices Day is so important."