Supporting Voice Hearers: Recovery and Discovery

Overview

Although traditionally understood as a purely medical symptom, an increasing amount of evidence shows powerful psychological links between painful events in people’s lives and the experience of hearing voices.

This live-stream lecture draws on the presenter’s own lived experience of trauma and psychosis, as well as recent research and clinical findings, to explore how a greater emphasis on trauma-focused care may help to promote healing and recovery within mental health services. Information is also provided on the work of the International Hearing Voices Movement, a survivor-led initiative which aims to support voice-hearers, reduce stigma and prejudice, and promote positive alliances between experts by experience (voice-hearers, their friends, and family members) and experts by profession (clinicians and researchers).

About the presenter

Dr Eleanor Longden

Eleanor is a Postdoctoral Service User Research Manager at the Psychosis Research Unit at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH), honorary research fellow at the University of Manchester, and co-director of GMMH's Complex Trauma and Resilience Research Unit.

Throughout her career, she has drawn on her own experiences of recovery from trauma and psychosis to promote person-centred approaches to complex mental health problems that emphasise the lived experience and expertise of service-users. Her research focusses on the relationship between dissociation, trauma, and voice-hearing, and she has lectured and published internationally on these issues.

Eleanor's 2013 TED talk on voice-hearing was named by the Guardian newspaper as one of the "20 Online Talks That Could Change Your Life" and in its first year online was viewed 2.5m times and translated into 33 languages.

Along with Dr Charlie Heriot-Maitland, she is co-author of the book 'Relating to Voices Using Compassion Focused Therapy: A Self-Help Companion.'