'Mad’ men and women embrace their mental health issues | KATU.com - Portland, Oregon | Local & Regional

'Mad’ men and women embrace their mental health issues KATU.com - Portland, Oregon Local & Regional:

"More than eight million Americans with either bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia are fighting the stigma of mental illness by embracing their “madness”, not suppressing it.

Will Hall has schizophrenia, but he said years of medication only made his condition worse.

“All my life I’ve experienced really difficult extreme states, hearing voices, seeing visions,” he said. “I felt like my creative emotional self was blunted and shut down and it really didn’t help me with any of the anxiety or fear I was experiencing.”

Hall chose more holistic treatments such as yoga, vitamins and a new diet over pharmaceuticals.

This idea came from the Mad Pride movement, a new and growing grassroots movement of people (as reported by ABC) with serious mental disorders who are rejecting traditional psychiatric treatments and standing up against the shame associated with mental illness.

“I’ve learned to really accept this as part of who I am rather than seeing, like oh, being very terrified of it and saying I have to get rid of it or have to stop everything but accept it as part of a natural rhythm and cycle of my life,” said Hall."

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

Hearing voices can be positive Tasmania News - The Mercury - The Voice of Tasmania

Hearing voices can be positive Tasmania News - The Mercury - The Voice of Tasmania:

HELEN KEMPTON

September 01, 2009

A NETWORK is being set up to support the estimated 20,000 Tasmanians who experience auditory hallucinations.

Hearing Voices Network Australia soon will be operating in Tasmania under the auspices of Richmond Fellowship Tasmania.

Hearing voices was not always a symptom of mental illness, Richmond Fellowship Tasmania chief executive Patrick Carlisle said.

'In many cases, voices can be positive. There have been many famous high achievers who have contributed very significantly to society who have identified themselves as a voice hearer, including Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Gandhi and (actor) Anthony Hopkins,' he said.

Research has found that about 4 per cent of the population hears voices but only 0.5 per cent of those are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia."

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

Hearing voices? You're not alone - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Hearing voices? You're not alone - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): "Hearing voices? You're not alone
Aug 27, 2009 7

Hearing voices: New support groups are offering help for people who suffer from auditory hallucinations

Audio: More Australians seeking mental health help (AM) Audio: Hearing Voices network launched in Victoria (AM) Mental health researchers estimate that about 4 per cent of people experience auditory hallucinations, where they hear voices.

In Australia, the problem has typically been treated with medication. But a network of self-help groups that has been successful overseas is now gradually being rolled out around the country.

Janet Karagounis started hearing the voices of her imaginary friends when she was 8, but by her late 20s the voices were more sinister and she ended up in a psychiatric unit.

'Basically I had aliens, I had government conspiracies, every couple of years I basically was put in a psychiatric unit and I was first diagnosed chronic schizophrenic,' she said.

'That wrote me off so to speak. I had no hope, no future, no chance of working. And yeah, now my life is glowing.'

Ms Karagounis credits a Hearing Voices group for turning her life around and she's now a group facilitator."

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

BBC NEWS | Health | Embracing the dark voices within

BBC NEWS Health Embracing the dark voices within: By Chloe Hadjimatheou
BBC World Service, 03/09/2009

Peter Bullimore explains how he deals with the voices in his head.

British psychologist, Rufus May is taking an unusual approach to schizophrenia by encouraging his patients not to battle against their voices - but to embrace them."

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Suspect's odd ways unnerved others - San Jose Mercury News

Suspect's odd ways unnerved others - San Jose Mercury News: "Garrido announced plans to give up the printing business and preach full time. Last year, he launched a company, God's Desire. His blog, called Voices Revealed, describes a fascination with mind control and the ability to hear the voices in people's heads.
'The Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake-up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world,' he wrote.
He asked to conduct a sermon at the Pittsburg wrecking yard JM Enterprise, according to owner Jim Molino, often engaging in religious discussions and distributing bottles of cold water to customers.
And he urged customers to sign testimonials confirming they had witnessed his ability to 'control sound with my"

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

Britney's Hearing Voices ... Again?

Britney's Hearing Voices ... Again?


For last year's VMA promos, host Russell Brand literally ignored the 300-pound elephant in the room as he chatted with Britney Spears. In the 2009 version, Brit and the Brit refuse to stoop so low as to use her one-time mental illness for sympathy votes ... but they aren't above using it for comical effect.

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

Hearing voices can be positive Tasmania News - The Mercury - The Voice of Tasmania

Hearing voices can be positive Tasmania News - The Mercury - The Voice of Tasmania: "HELEN KEMPTON
September 01, 2009 04:00am
A NETWORK is being set up to support the estimated 20,000 Tasmanians who experience auditory hallucinations.
Hearing Voices Network Australia soon will be operating in Tasmania under the auspices of Richmond Fellowship Tasmania.
Hearing voices was not always a symptom of mental illness, Richmond Fellowship Tasmania chief executive Patrick Carlisle said.
'In many cases, voices can be positive. There have been many famous high achievers who have contributed very significantly to society who have identified themselves as a voice hearer, including Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Gandhi and (actor) Anthony Hopkins,' he said.
Research has found that about 4 per cent of the population hears voices but only 0.5 per cent of those are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The new network will give Tasmanians affected a chance to meet and talk, share coping strategies and explore ways to work with the voices rather than against them.
The network will begin training support staff and facilitators in November with the aim of starting meetings early in 2010.
For more information, contact Richmond Fellowship Tasmania on 6228 3344"

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

Man gets death for ‘02 killings`

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, February 12, 2009

Full story here


A judge issued a rare Fulton County death sentence Wednesday for a man convicted of murdering his girlfriend’s 12-year-old son and her grandparents in a fit of rage more than six years ago.

....The defense attorneys contend Martin is schizoprhenic because he reports hearing voices and hallucinates. But Lance Cross, one of the prosecutors, said there is no “credible evidence” Martin is mentally ill.

The unmedicated Martin shows no outward signs of schizophrenia and no cellmates or guards reported him hallucinating or hearing voices, Cross said.

God Saved Carlos Santana Seven Times From Suicide

Source:One India

Full story

"I'm still hearing all this inner stuff, a thousand voices screaming at you, accusing you... but then I would just look at a picture of Jesus and say, 'Help me,' and then, very clearly, inwardly, I would hear this one voice that's softer and louder than all the others, and it would say, 'I'm sitting next to you. Isn't that enough?'"Once I heard that voice, something would shift, and I'd be able to find joy again in food and breathing," he added."

"Humour" and voices

Deaf Man Hears Voices In His Head - Doctors Baffled

The Spoof

Written by Duncan Whitehead

06 October 2008

"They wouldn't even let him take a shower in peace. Poor sod. A man from Newport Pagnell, believed to be suffering from schizophrenia reported hearing voices in his head - despite the fact he has been deaf since birth!

Christopher Worm, 23, tried to explain to Doctors that he heard voices commanding him to do something on Saturday night - but as Christopher can only lip read and do sign language he had no idea what those instructions were.

After an extensive search for a psychiatrist who could understand sign language Christopher was able to explain that he has been hearing the voices intermittently for five years - he also has feelings of paranoia.

Renowned fake psychiatrist Harold K Nutt told me "Why these spirits and ghosts are picking on a deaf kid who can't understand them is beyond me. These poltergeists or aliens or little people in your head need to jump into a normal persons head and make them mad" confirmed Nutt, who was chewing a turd."

The story above is a satire or parody. It is entirely fictitious.

Voices and "Violence": recent press coverage of court case involving people who hear voices

Jett Says Voices Tell Him To Act Out

San Antonio News, 10th September 2008

Full story

A convicted murder who acted out multiple times during his trial said Friday his actions were prompted by voices telling him what to do.

Richard Jett, sentenced to 99 years in prison this week for the June 2006 murder of 80-year-old Homer Daniels, said he suffers from a mental illness -- a claim court psychiatrists said the 50-year-old Jett faked.

During his trial, Jett wrote on his body and face with ink, showed up to court in boxer shorts after trying to flush clothes and smeared his own feces on himself.

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Attorney says murder defendant 'hearing voices'

Bakersfield Californian
Full story

September 23, 2008

Saying his client was “hearing voices,” a defense attorney in a local murder trial made a last-minute request Monday for an evaluation to determine whether his client is mentally competent to stand trial.

The highly unusual request, coming just before opening statements were set to begin, was made by defense attorney James Faulkner on behalf of one of two defendants in the two-year-old murder case.

Superior Court Judge Michael Bush was clearly taken aback by the request. It’s been nearly two years since the defendant was arrested, and such requests are typically made well before trials begin.

Faulkner said the issue came up during a 90-minute talk he had with his client over the weekend.

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Inmate Who Killed Cellmate "Was Hearing Voices"

Shortnews.com

Full story

19 September 2008

Jose Guadalupe Barrera-Rodrigu, a convicted double murderer at the Sacramento Main jail awaiting sentencing, has been rebooked after allegedly killing his cellmate, Demario Lavell Patterson. Both were being held in the protective custody unit.

According to Deputy DA Noah Phillips, Barrera-Rodrigu "was seen by the psych unit at the Main Jail and he had a complaint of auditory hallucinations. He said he was hearing voices ... telling him to hurt people and to kill himself."

When informed of Barrera-Rodrigu's psychiatric status, Patterson's mother cried "Oh my God. Why did they let Demario be in the same cell as him? Why?"

Officials have called the killing "just an unfortunate incident."

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Voices told mom: baby was 'a demon'

The Reporter

8th October 2008

Full story

A young mother arrested for abandoning her baby at a Vacaville middle school informed police that voices had told her the baby was a demon, testimony revealed Tuesday in Solano County Superior Court.

At the conclusion of a 20-minute preliminary court hearing Tuesday afternoon, Judge Donna Stashyn ruled that sufficient evidence appeared to have been presented to hold 22-year-old defendant Brittaney Quewon-Owens for trial on charges of child endangerment and child abandonment.

Healing Voices

Will Hall talking about the Freedom Center, his voice hearing expereinces and alternative mental health ....

"Since I was a child I've struggled with extreme emotions, voices and powerful out of body experiences. I remember falling to the ground once in third grade, writhing in agony because I believed something was grabbing my back. I saw cartoons projected on the ceiling, and my fear was sometimes so strong I fell mute. I often hid away, alone, overwhelmed and unable to describe what was going on.

At age 26, I hit a breaking point and wandered the streets of San Francisco all night hearing angry voices telling me to kill myself. I ended up on a locked psychiatric ward. For the next year, I was in and out of hospitals and homeless shelters.

My diagnosis was schizoaffective schizophrenia, and the treatment was powerful anti-psychotic medications. What the doctors had to offer didn't help me, however. I left the hospital with more problems than I had going in, and I had to cope with the trauma of restraints, seclusion, plus a stigmatizing label that offered little hope for the future.

With nowhere to turn, I started to search for an answer on my own. In 2000, some friends in the Northampton, Mass., area let me stay with them, and I got a job in a local convenience store. Then I worked in a bookstore. The daily routine of a job, getting away from the memories in San Francisco, the small town tempo--it all helped. Step by step, over these difficult years, I learned a different way of responding to my madness. "

Full story Forbes.com, 29th August 2008

Virginia Woolf: "I was fascinated by her hearing voices ..." New Dance By Lynne Taylor-corbett

Not Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

Groundworks Premieres New Dance By Lynne Taylor-corbett
By Michael Gill

"I feel certain that I am going mad again," Virginia Woolf wrote in her oft-quoted suicide note to husband Leonard Woolf. "I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came."

Suffering from what scholars have posthumously diagnosed as bipolar disorder, Woolf put an end to her own misery by filling her pockets with rocks and walking into a river. The final hours of the great English novelist and essayist's life have long fascinated the acclaimed choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who is best known for work on Broadway shows like Chess and Swing, and movies including Footloose and My Blue Heaven. She spoke with Scene by phone from New York, where she was casting the dance company for a touring production of the Disney musical Tarzan.

"Virginia Woolf is, for some reason, an author that affected me when I was in my 20s," she says. "She's so much in our culture. I was fascinated by her hearing voices as her depression was coming on." Taylor-Corbett is in town this week for GroundWorks Dancetheater's premiere of her yet-to-be-named work, a fantasy based on the imagined final hours of the writer in the room of her own - a time during which she decided she couldn't go on living and drag her husband through her depression, but had the presence of mind and awareness of their mutual love to write such a cogent and heartfelt letter.

Full article, Clevelend Free Times, September, 2008

"She was suffering," the choreographer says, "but this woman was not insane."

Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) interview

Extract from interview with Brian Wilson, voice hearer and musician. Note reference to abusive father ....

Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) interview

"Brian Wilson founded The Beach Boys in 1961 but, despite the group’s success, his life has been plagued by mental health problems.

21 June 2008

EDP24 News (UK)

.... Carl and Dennis are long gone; Carl died from cancer in 1998, Dennis drowned in an alcohol-related incident in 1983. Somehow Brian outlived them. That seemed unlikely for much of the 1960s and '70s. His gargantuan drug intake - LSD, marijuana, amphetamine and cocaine - shattered his mental equilibrium permanently, his weight ballooned, he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he began hearing voices in his head.

He is much recovered but in 2004 he confided to American TV host Larry King: “I can still hear things like 'I'm going to kill you', but I don't hear very many other kind of thoughts. Just usually negative thoughts…”The mental health issues dated to his childhood, however, and owed much to his tyrannical father Murry.

In his autobiography Brian wrote that “playing the piano… literally saved my ass. I recall playing one time while my dad flung Dennis against the wall… That was just one of many incidents when I didn't miss a note, supplying background music to the hell that often substituted for a family life”.

Be it the drugs or the upbringing, the result was a dysfunctional personality. Stories of his eccentricity are legion and have been repeated ad nauseam. His revival during this decade has been wondrous and unexpected. It is a far cry from the 1970s and '80s when he lived under the influence of the controlling Dr Eugene Landy, whose method of therapy involved restricting Brian's contact with his family and friends and demanding complete obedience. In short, he has suffered more than most for his talent. I wonder whether he might have preferred a happy life to a brilliant one. The 'genius' tag has attached itself to him for the past 40 years, I suspect rather like a millstone at times. So does he ever consider this to be a burden; how does the word 'genius' make him feel? “It makes me feel I'm very clever or smart.” And do you agree with them, Brian?“Yeah, I do. Yeah!”

Full interview here

Britain's child victims of the chemical cosh

Independent on Sunday (UK)

Sunday, 15 June 2008

Powerful anti-psychotic drugs designed for adults are being used to treat children, including those with learning difficulties. Brian Brady and Nina Lakhani report

The number of powerful psychiatric drugs prescribed to England's children has risen by more than half in four years, government figures have revealed.

GPs in England are handing out prescriptions for anti-psychotic drugs for children as young as seven at the rate of 250 a day, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday.

Latest data compiled for the NHS show that tranquillisers designed to treat serious conditions including schizophrenia in adults were prescribed to young people 57,000 times in 2003. But the total had risen to more than 90,000 by 2006 – a 59 per cent rise in three years. The figures do not include drugs dispensed in hospitals. Experts believe the increase is partly down to early detection and treatment of serious mental health problems in children, but there is also concern they are being used inappropriately to treat psychological and learning difficulties. Shortage of staff and resources are further factors.

The drugs, which are designed to treat symptoms such as visual hallucinations, hearing voices and delusional thoughts, have serious side effects including weight gain, tiredness, sexual dysfunction and lactation. The safety and effectiveness of these drugs, which were designed for adults, have not been fully tested on children.

'No one ever talked about side effects with me, not once'

Lucy Bennett, 19, from Exeter, lives with her seven-month-old son Harvey. For a year she lived in psychiatric hospitals with medication the only option.

"By the time I was 15 I had every problem you can imagine. I was into drugs, alcohol, boys, and had stopped going to school. After years of growing up with my mum's mental illness and alcohol problems, I was on a road to self-destruction. I finally told a psychiatrist in A&E I was hearing voices after which I was admitted to hospital straight away.

"I felt terrible. I was all over the place, so when the doctors and nurses told me the medication would make me feel better, I took them. In some ways I did feel a bit better. I was a complete zombie and sleeping all the time which meant I didn't care about the voices any more, but they were still there.

"Within days I had started leaking milk from my breast. It was awful. I swapped medication and within three months I had put on three stone. I was so depressed at being a size 16 I started making myself sick. I ended up with bulimia as well.

"As soon as I decided I didn't want to take the drugs I was sectioned and forcibly injected. I ended pretending the voices had gone just so I could get out. Drugs were the only option. I had a psychology session for an hour a week and a few family therapy sessions but that was it. No one ever talked about side effects with me, not once. I ended up having to get information from my mum and other patients.

"Three years later I am medication free and learning new ways to cope with my voices. I have a great community psychiatric nurse, who lets me keep some medication for emergencies, but I'm in control now. There is no way I could look after my son if I was still on the medication. I know they can help some people but they didn't help me. I should have been given the choice."

Full story here

You can comment on the story here

‘More real than reality’: a study of voice hearing

I've just come across this recently published paper by INTERVOICE supporter, Lis-Bodil Karlsson from Sweden, see abstract below:

"Hearing voices can be considered as elusive or illusory hallucinations in the sense that they are perceptions that have no external reason or even that they are divorced from reality. The aim of this article is to describe how participants in different focus groups account for and understand their voice-hearing experiences. The study shows that voice hearing can be such an overwhelming experience that it can even be experienced as ‘more real than reality’. Voices are strong and powerful experiences that sometimes convey memories from the past or difficulties that the voice hearer would prefer to forget but in fact has had to confront. The voices also influence how the voice hearer sees his or her future. This study contributes to our knowledge of the world and language of voice hearers from the perspective of social work."

International Journal of Social Welfare Lis-Bodil Karlsson (2007)
‘More real than reality’: a study of voice hearing
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2397.2007.00524.x

The power of the blog: INTERVOICE website gets lots more hits this week

Normally our site gets an average of 100 new visitors daily.

Yesterday and today has proven to be exceptional.

Following descriptions of the INTERVOICE site and links to it being put up on a blog page known as Presurfer and then on a Canadian blog called Web Junkie and then two German news sites Speigel and Ehrensenf we got over 900 unique visitor hits in one day.

A record!

The only time we came close to that was on the 21st April following the broadcast of The Doctor Who Hear Voices on UK TV station Channel 4 when we got almost 400 hits.

Thanks for getting the information out there folks, even if you think it is all a bit weird.

Mark Stachiew, the Web Junkie said:

When people hear voices in their minds, psychiatrists usually prescribe medications for them to make the voices go away, but not everyone who experiences auditory hallucinations thinks they are a bad thing. In fact, there's a website where the people who hear voices in their head can gather to trade their stories. It sure beats where they usually gather to meet in person which is the asylum.

So he really misses the point.

Whilst Presurfer hosted by Gerard Vlemmings from the Netherlands, describes itself as a daily Dose of Diversion. A weblog about the weird, unusual, funny, strange and informative sites that can be found on the Internet.

Well read the site and make up your own minds!