I’m excited to be offering 3 courses in Canterbury (Kent) and Leicester over the next few months. The workshops are open to people with lived experience, family/friends, mental health workers and anyone interested in the topic area. If you know someone who might like to attend, please share this information with them.
All courses are priced at £85 waged, £50 unwaged/low waged & £25 service users/carers. CPD Certificates are included.
Continue reading “July – August – New courses in Kent & Leicester”
Tags: Healing, Hearing Voices, Meaning-Making, Psychosis, Taboo Voices, Training
Harry: Do you think I should have told them? Dumbledore and the others, I mean.
Ron: Are you mad?
Hermione: No, Harry. Even in the wizarding world, hearing voices isn’t a good sign.
– Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
In the last few years I’ve developed a sincere admiration for those youth workers who specialise in working with young people pushed out onto the edge of society. I’ve witnessed, first hand, the ease with which they can broach topics that would leave many of us feeling uncomfortable. The best of them can speak about sex, violence, drugs and exploitation in a real and pragmatic way that signals a deep acceptance and understanding of the dilemmas young people face – with no blame or judgement. This ability to transform the taboo into the ordinary is something I’ve tried to develop in my own work. Through Voice Collective, a project supporting children and young people who hear voices in London, I specialise in training youth workers to do the one thing that can push them far outside of their comfort zone – talking with young people about hearing voices.
Continue reading “Breaking The Silence: Supporting Young People who Hear Voices”
Tags: Children, Hearing Voices, Stigma, USA, Young People
This article first appeared in Mad in America (www.madinamerica.com).
The use of medication in mental health services is a hot issue. Despite the paucity of evidence supporting its long-term efficacy, critiquing the use of ‘antipsychotic’ medication can be felt as a personal attack both on those who use it to manage distressing experiences and those who prescribe it. Those of us who question psychiatry’s relationship with medication may be be dismissed as ‘Pill Shamers’ or branded as irresponsible and dangerous voices by those who are convinced medication is the only way of treating someone’s ‘illness’. The debate can feel like a fight between two intractably opposed sides, giving the impression that we must either be ‘for’ or ‘against’ medication. Unfortunately the information and space needed to explore our complex relationship with medication – as practitioners and people – is in short supply, making the concept of informed choice a bad joke.
Over the next two years, I’ll be working alongside Rob Allison, Adam Jhugroo & Phil Thomas (two critical mental health nurses and a critical psychiatrist) to bring together a range of contributions from people who have successfully taken control of their use of medication, either by withdrawing completely from it or finding a reduced dose that works for them in a book called ‘Coming Off?’. In this blog, I hope to share some of my own experiences of medication as a way of explaining why I’m excited to be involved in this initiative. Continue reading “Me & The Meds: The Story of a Dysfunctional Relationship”
Tags: Critical Perspectives, Medication, Personal Experience, Recovery, Relationship
Short Thought #1: ‘Don’t Confront, Don’t Collude?’ from Rai Waddingham on Vimeo.
This is the first in a series of free ‘shorts’. This one explores the mantra, woven deep into psychiatric practice – the belief that we should neither confront nor collude with beliefs that are seen as ‘delusional’. In the video, I share some of my thoughts about the challenges of this mantra, and question the idea of ‘collusion’ as being applicable to the mental health field.
Tags: Beliefs, Critical Perspectives, Psychosis, Reflection
5th November 2013, Bradford
As the Alternative Mental Health Perspectives conference approached, I felt a mix of nerves and excitement. After all, this was a fantastic opportunity to engage AMHPs across Yorkshire in both unflinchingly confronting the current problems in the mental health system and think about innovative approaches that offer real alternatives.
Robert Whitaker
The day launched with Robert Whitaker, author of Mad In America. It’s not the first time I’ve been lucky enough to hear him speak. He’s been touring pretty much consistently since the the launch of his most recent book – Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. Robert, a science journalist, described his journey into uncovering the lack of evidence for long term use of psychotropic medication. Whereas I’m usually left with a sense of hopelessness on hearing him talk, wondering how we can ever move away from the naive belief that medication is the panacea for mental distress – this time I felt something different. On hearing the change in response to Robert in the medical community – and the new research and papers emerging that are beginning to catch up with his conclusions that our faith in psychotropic medication may be misplaced.
“It is time to reappraise the assumption that antipsychotics must always be the first line of treatment for people with psychosis.This is not a wild cry from the distant outback, but a considered opinion by influential researchers . . . [there is] an increasing body of evidence that the adverse effects of [antipsychotic] treatment are, to put it simply, not worth the candle.”
-Peter Tyrer, Editor British Journal of Psychiatry, August 2012
Continue reading “Alternative Mental Health Perspectives – Yorkshire AMHPs”
Tags: Conference, Critical Mental Health, Hearing Voices Groups, Mental Health Services
First published in Mad in America, www.madinamerica.com
Whenever we talk about ourselves we tell stories. Without these stories, our experiences would sit – unconnected – like a thousand tiny beads. Telling our story helps us to weave connections between these beads, linking them together with different threads to create a tapestry full of meaning. This is a fluid and continually evolving process. Each new experience, interaction or connection reveals new aspects of the picture we are continually creating. It shifts and changes as we, ourselves, shift and change.
Reflecting our experience of the world, this process can be terrifying and confusing as well as beautiful and rewarding. In psychiatry, something profound happens to these stories. It’s as if someone takes your tapestry, labels it as defective and gives you the pattern you need to rectify your mistakes. Unquestioningly, you unpick your tapestry and – instead – weave the beads together to form a picture of symptoms, diagnosis, illness, genetic vulnerabilities and pathological responses to stress. With each stitch, those around you nod and praise your keen insight. After a while you forget that you ever had a story of your own. In this way, a ‘schizophrenic’ is born. Continue reading “Symptom or Experience: Does Language Matter?”
Tags: Critical Perspectives, Diagnosis, Language, Narratives, Schizophrenia
Featured in ISPS UK Spring 2013 Newsletter
As someone who has lived experience of being diagnosed with schizophrenia (amongst other things) the release of the ‘Schizophrenia’ Commission Report has left me with very mixed feelings. First and foremost, I applaud the hard work of the members of the commission and all those who gave evidence and contributed to it. During the evidence-gathering phase, I was also heartened that the commission really tried to listen to a wide variety of views and experiences. I particularly appreciated their call for people who, like me, are critical of the diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’.
Basing it on lived experience (both personal and professional) helped ensure that the report itself contains some excellent points that ring true for me. For example, I fully agree that Early Intervention in Psychosis Teams can do excellent work and should be extended rather than diluted or cut. The need to find better ways of equipping young people with the emotional literacy and support networks is hard to argue with. Continue reading “The Schizophrenia Commission: A personal perspective”
Tags: Critical Perspectives, Diagnosis, Schizophrenia
9th July 2013, London
On 9th July, Mind in Camden’s Prison Project held a one day conference in London: ‘Voices Unlocked’. Having set up, and worked on, this project since its launch in 2010 – I was both excited and nervous to share our work with a wider audience. The day was a huge success, bringing together people from across the country who care about providing better support for people in prison who hear voices or see visions. We welcomed prison officers, mental health staff, charities, user/survivor groups, governmental bodies and reform campaigners – resulting in a melting pot of ideas and experiences that helped add to the depth of the day.
In the morning, we heard from Jacqui Dillon (Chair of HVN), who talked about supporting people in secure units who hear violent voices. Kimmett Edgar from the Prison Reform Trust challenged the myth that people in prison are only out for themselves and won’t engage in peer support. Dolly Sen challenged the myth that hope is unrealistic – some people just won’t recover and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sharron and Paul (from HMP Holloway and HMP Pentonville, respectively) shared their experiences as prison officers who now work with the Hearing Voices Group in their prison.
After showing our Voices: Unlocked short film about Hearing Voices Groups in Prison, I shared my experiences as project manager. I explored why Hearing Voices Groups are essential to support people in prison who are struggling with difficult voices or visions, and our experience of how these groups can really begin to change the culture of prisons in a positive manner.
Afternoon workshops included: making sense of violent voices; rethinking paranoia and working with trauma and self-harm. there was plenty of opportunity to learn from those with lived experience of hearing voices. the conference attracted a wide variety of attendees and provided a platform for extending the project across the country.
For more information on Mind in Camden’s London Hearing Voices Prisons Project, see: www.mindincamden.org.uk
Tags: Conference, Hearing Voices Groups, Prison
10th December 2012, Bradford
I was excited to trek up to sunny Bradford in December to take part in Soteria Bradford’s ‘Beyond Medication – How do we reduce our dependance on psychotropic drugs?’ conference. Rather than getting stuck in expounding the drawbacks and dangers to psychotropic medication, this conference also gave space to explore creative alternatives to drugs. This is clearly something we need more of – space to approach medication in a balanced way whilst focusing on what else is available.
The day started with Robert Whitaker, a science journalist who stumbled upon the realisation that recovery outcomes have not gotten better since the introduction of neuroleptics and other psychotropic medication – they’ve actually got worse. He has spent years going over the research evidence for and against medication and believes that the research clearly shows that whilst medication can be helpful for some people, the long term outcomes for the vast majority aren’t good.
Hearing him speak is a little like being hit by a slidgehammer – hearing one research finding after another that counters the mainstream view of the usefulness of medication. This isn’t new information for me, having heard him speak before and having looked at the research papers. Still, there’s something very powerful about they way Robert puts it all together. He doesn’t shout, yell or make grand pronouncements about what we should do with the information – he simply puts it there and makes it obvious that we need to do something.
Next up, Ruari shared his experiences of breakdown, hospitalisation and the legacy of being diagnosed with a mental ‘illness’. Hearing him speak, I felt very angry at the judgements that had been made about his suitability for work and the discrimination that he had faced.
After lunch, Rufus took to the stage to get up all warmed up with some grounding exercises. Moving your body in a room of a 100 people or so can feel a little strange, but given the subject matter it was a breath of fresh air.
Using art to express what’s inside
After Rufus, it was my turn to explore ways of using creativity to understand, and live with, distressing experiences. As someone who is only reluctantly identified as creative, I first looked at some of our stereotypes about creativity and distress before opening up the field to include anything that we do that is slightly ‘outside of the box’. For the rest of the presentation, I shared how I have used creativity to find ways of expressing, making sense of and dealing with my experiences. I also used my work at Voice Collective as an example of how young people, together, can come up with some very creative routes to recovery that us adults might not have considered.
The afternoon workshops included: Emancipatory networks and dialogues; How to reduce medication; Bradford Soteria: The story so far; Exploring creative routes to recovery. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the other workshops as I was facilitating a creative space to share the many different ways we can use creativity to facilitate our own personal recovery (whatever recovery means). I really enjoyed being able to sit around informally with people sharing experiences and ideas with one another. It helped underline the truth that there is no one way of understanding or dealing with the world, but that we all need support to find our own path.
By the end of the day I was feeling both inspired and frustrated. The frustration came from me comparing the content of the conference with the content of the ‘Schizophrenia Commission’ report which suggests we already know what worked with ‘schizophrenia’ (e.g. medication and CBT) but that the problem is people don’t have access to the latest treatments. The conference highlighted to me that we still don’t know what works, but that medication – whilst helpful for some – is not the panacea we once believed it was.
Tags: Alternatives, Conference, Critical Mental Health, Medication
Open Paradigm Project
Between 19th & 21st September, hundreds of people from around the world descended on Cardiff, Wales, for the annual World Hearing Voices Congress. This annual event is one of the highlights of my year, and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to go every year since 2009. It’s a fantastic opportunity to meet other people who hear voices, see visions and our allies (including friends, families, mental health professionals, academics and other supporters). Each year, I leave the congress feeling inspired at the strength, resilience and sense of community I find there.
During the congress, I spoke to some lovely people from the Open Paradigm Project about my experience of the Hearing Voices Movement and my own journey within it. The following documentary – ‘Voices Matter’ uses some of this interview footage, along with interviews and clips from many other attendees. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Hearing Voices Movement and really getting a feel for the congresses – it’s a great place to start.
You can see the full interview here: Rachel Waddingham – from psychiatric patient to teacher
Tags: Critical Mental Health, Documentary, Hearing Voices Network, Intervoice, Personal Experience
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