HVN is an 'international network of enlightened peer support groups, for people who experience a variety of sensate experiences, visions etc. Groups, Ideally integrate both "patient" and "non patient" voice hearers. Some people experience voice hearing as traumatic and seek psychiatric services (patients), some people have these experiences in a way that is helpful or non-traumatic (non-patients). It is important to point out that all people who hear or see things are not necessarily mentally ill or receiving mental health services. The field of psychiatry has long neglected this fact. The goal of these groups is to de-stigmatize the experience of hearing voices and work toward a society in which voice hearing will be no more considered indicative of illness or something to be cured‚ than left-handedness.
HVN originated in Maastricht Limberg Holland based on a conversation between Patsy Haagan and her psychiatrist Marius Romme. Patsy was a patient of Professor Marius Romme. She asked him: "You believe in a God that no one can see, so why don‚t you believe in the voices, that I at least can definitely hear and are real to me?," Patsy had read The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind By Julian Jaynes. It discusses how, throughout history voice hearing was normal and for some, still is normal. Other research bears this out, yet psychiatry has not been observant of this difference as being anything other than symptom of disease.
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t has been known for some time that a high percentage of the general population experience brief and occasional voices, particularly at times of bereavement, divorce and separation. It is also a common experience for people in extreme circumstances, for instance, 80 per cent of those who have endured torture have hallucinated during their ordeal (Amnesty International) and the phenomenon is also seen amongst long-distance yachtsmen (Bennett, 1972). In cases like these, there is no evidence of the presence of mental illness - indeed, often quite the contrary.
Hearing Voices groups are necessary because voice hearing can be traumatizing. When people remain in a chronic state of fear, they cannot easily tap into their own innate wisdom and use it to move forward. Also, while in this state of fear, people do not percieve that they may hear both positive and negative voices. For many voice hearers, no amount of medication and community support resolves the torment of negative voices. Even the combination of talk therapy, medication and community-based services can fail to help people learn to better understand, accept and deal with their voices. What is required is the assistance and friendship of voice hearing peers who have wisdom and experience. Voices groups assist people in coming to understand, cope and often resolve abuse by negative voices. Often people begin to percieve who or what the voices represent to them as it applies to their own life history.
This is accomplished by:
Accepting the experience
defining the experience on one's own terms
interpreting the experience on one's own terms
working with the experience on one's own terms
And despite any obstacle, finding a way to work toward one's dreams.
It cannot be overstated and the wisdom of community mental health proves, that when people find a way to create the life they want & find a way to work toward their dreams the majority of a person's mental health symptoms fade.
In making friends with other voice hearers in a open, non-judging environment, people begin to develop mastery of the voice hearing experience, when many aspects of the experience that had previously overwhelmed and traumatized them. Meeting with peers with similar experiences is extraordinarily normalizing and provides an environment for self-empowerment. Through this support, people naturally learn to perceive themselves from a "strengths based" view. People involved in these groups also naturally create their own interdependent peer support networks.
Why it is a Hearing Voices network needed in the United States?
A. Increased incidence of "Traumatic Life Events"
Hearing Voices Network-USA needs to become a formal organization to assist HVN in the UK, with increased requests for help creating new HVN-peer support groups across the United States. We need to be able to perform much more outreach. The following may explain our increased requests for information and why our growth is necessary.
The majority of our population assumes that voice hearing is schizophrenia and that schizophrenia is an organic illness. Contrary to this thinking, Marius Romme and Sandra Escher found that 70% of those they interviewed started hearing voices after a traumatic life event.
"Traumatic life event" was defined as:
1. Violent death of a loved one by murder, suicide or accident
2. Leaving home for the first time
3. Physical, sexual or emotional abuse
4. Being involved in a major disaster.
As we in the United States, experience the effects of terrorism, national disasters and involvement in a war, it is unfortunately true that more U.S. citizens are experiencing traumatic life events.
Those of us, who have already found ways to understand our own voices, find we are uniquely qualified to help others through this very alarming experience.
B. Increasing incidence of support worker trauma or "Compassion Fatigue" and "'Critical Incident Stress"
We feel it is particularly necessary at this time, for us to reach out to both exhausted volunteers and overwhelmed emergency services workers. Generally speaking, crisis workers are vulnerable to two kinds of psychological trauma. "Critical Incident Stress" is the adverse psychological and/or physiological reaction to a stressful incident. Search and Rescue personnel are particularly susceptible to this due to the very nature of their job. http://www.islandnet.com/sarbc/ciss1.html
Although Critical Incident Stress Management CISM is a well-developed field designed to help people in this situation, in the months following an incident, to whom can the worker confidently talk to, if his/her symptoms includes voice hearing? Our culture is still very frightened by this phenomenon and people are likely to say nothing about this experience, rather than upset those close to them.
We would like to help these heroic individuals understand that if they are hearing voices they are not necessarily schizophrenic, or chronically mentally ill.