The following is a letter from Marius Romme, Manuel de Chavez, Hywel Davies & Sandra Escher (Sandra is a Board member of Intervoice) looking for contributions to a new book they are hoping to publish around Hearing Voices Groups.
12th November 2014
To: National and Regional Hearing Voices Network coordinators, Hearing Voices Group Facilitators and Members
Dear Friends,
Intervoice requests your support and co-operation in undertaking an inventory of hearing voices groups.
INTERVOICE would like to ask for your co-operation in undertaking an inventory of existing peer support groups for voice hearers (usually known as “hearing voices groups”).
INTERVOICE www.intervoiceonline.org is the international organisation for supporting the exchange of information and the holding of annual meetings for the 29 national networks of voice hearers and their supporters.
You can help us by completing the form yourself or by sharing the information with any groups you know of.
This inventory will be conducted by Marius Romme and Manuel de Chavez and you will find it in pdf format attached below or by going to here.
Inventory of Hearing Voices Groups
Marius Romme carried out the research which led to the formation of the hearing voices movement and Manuel de Chavez has for many years facilitated groups with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Why do we need an inventory?
Hearing voices groups could be called the backbone of the hearing voices movement. The hearing voices groups have proven to be very useful to voice hearers and they have also been critical to the successful dissemination of the hearing voices approach.
To date though, we have not systematically gathered and shared information about the way groups are organised and operate. We have not assessed their impact on supporting the recovery of voice hearers.
Our objective is to collate a book like “Living with voices” in which we published 50 stories of how people experiencing distressing voices recovered their lives. We want to do the same by telling the stories of hearing voices groups.
Therefore to increase our knowledge we would like to undertake an inventory as described below.
How you can participate
We are asking facilitators of hearing voices group to inform us about the group you facilitate. Firstly, we would like you to write an essay about your group broadly following the attached schedule of the information we are gathering.
We would like to publish your story about your group so that others will be better informed and possibly inspired by the way hearing voices groups are working.
This book will not be a “scientific” inventory but an informative inventory. Therefore we not only want you to describe your group according to the schedule attached, but also tell us about specialties you have developed for the group you facilitate. We ask you to try to tell the story of your group in about 4 pages, that is about 2000 words. We will publish the full story or edit your story back into 2000 words and will of course discuss that with you before publishing.
We also will extrapolate the most important issues that arise from the different stories, concerning organisation, the ways of working and the results. In this way we will consider the differences between group therapy approaches and facilitated groups in supporting voice hearers to learn to cope with their voices, to discover their meaning and the impact the groups have had on their recovery from the distress caused their voices.
We hope you will not only participate in this venture but that you will also enjoy writing about your group.
We would like to thank Paul Baker and Hywel Davies for their help in issuing this invitation.
Please return the completed inventory by scanning it and sending it as an attachement to Marius Romme at [email protected]
Or send it by post to Marius Romme, Gielessestreet No 6, Fouron le Comte, Postal Code 3798 Belgium
With warm regards.
Marius Romme, Manuel de Chavez, Hywel Davies & Sandra Escher (Board member of Intervoice)
