The CAFÉ TA Center recently hosted Hearing Voices Network: De-mystifying Voices and Visions, a free webinar about alternative approaches to voice hearing and visions associated with schizophrenia and other serious mental health conditions.
In the US, the experiences of hearing voices, having visions, or sensing or feeling things that others may not are often viewed as symptoms of illness. Schizophrenia, psychosis, and thought disorders are common diagnoses attributed to these experiences. Alternative, non-medicalized understandings of these experiences have come from other cultures, and voice hearers themselves have described them as a gist, spiritual awakening, and response to extreme distress or trauma.
There is, in fact, a national and international community called Hearing Voices Network (HVN) that seeks to demystify the experience, offer information, education, and support to understand voice hearing and visions, promote recovery rather than pathology, and challenge negative stereotypes, biases, and stigma.
If you are someone with shared experience who is interested in learning more about HVN, or if you’re someone that is seeking more understanding about the experience, check out this conversation!
This webinar is the ninth in a year-long series of monthly conversations about innovative peer-centered, recovery-focused practices in mental health facilitated by national peer leader, CEO of Promise Resource Network, and 2022 Bazelon Center Innovator of the Year Cherene Caraco.
Throughout the series, Cherene and CAFE TAC will introduce attendees to leaders with lived experience who have launched alternative ways to advance recovery, voice, and healing in their communities. Join us as we learn about innovative approaches, concepts, models and programs throughout the US and become inspired to perhaps launch your own!