Raising Our Voices - an account of the Hearing Voices movement
by Adam James, journalist and 2001 winner of MIND Journalist of the Year
180 pages, paperback
Available only from psychminded - for just £5 (+postage)
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CONTENTS:

Chap 1: Moses - prophet or schizophrenic?
Was Moses a prophet or voice-hearing psychotic? 'Everyone heard voices before 2,500 BC' wrote US psychologist Julian Jaynes in his seminal book The Bicameral Mind which heralded the Hearing Voices Network. But has this scholar's work been marginalised ever since?

Chap 2: The beginning of the Hearing Voices Network.
Did you know that the first UK hearing voices self-help group was set-up partly because a sociology student needed funding for his Phd...find out other interesting info about the rise of this influential mental health movement. Plus, read about the network's moves to becoming a 'user-led' organisation

Chap 3: Self-help - Voice-hearers helping themselves
Read the story of how six hearing voices self-help groups formed. Plus, what are the most effective way to cope with voices? What do members of a self-help group in Salisbury, Wiltshire, think.

Chap 4: Who or what are the voices?
The Hearing Voices Network is marked by its acceptance of a diversity of explanations for what causes voices. This chapture features contributions by three voice-hearers - Maxwell Steer, musician and composer, Mickey de Valda, Hearing Voices Network chair and former patient and Kati Meadow

Chap 5: Psychotic and Proud
The story of Ron Coleman, former national co-ordinator of the Hearing Voices Network, who became a charismatic speaker in the service user-movement. Read about his life; the trauma and grief, his first voice-hearing experience, consultations with psychiatrists, ECT, "escape" from sections, coming off neuroleptics, plus how vital support from Hearing Voices Network members enabled him to 'recover' and build a career in mental health

Chap 6: Cognitive psychology and hearing voices
Read how clinical psychology developed cognitive treatments for voice-hearing, plus an appraisal of clinical psychology. Should clinical psychology ally itself with psychiatry or service users? Read what leading psychologists, such as Richard Bentall, think

Chap 7: Who's a monkey? Patient or psychiatrist?
Read how those in the hearing voices movement also endeavoured to rethink self-harm as a coping mechanism to deal with distress. This is compared to orthodox theorising - derived from experimenting on rheseus monkeys.

Chap 8: Grooming maverick psychiatrists.
Never before has such a revealing informal discussion between trainee psychiatrists been put to print. Read what 20 trainees psychiatrists at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital think about diagnosising patients, pressures from seniors, and working conditions. Some remarkable insights. Plus, why did psychiatrist Phil Thomas feign cutting his wrists with a razor blade?

Chap 9: Advocacy at the deep end
The true story of Hearing Voices Network advocacy work for a young mother detained in hospital

Chap 10: The genetics of schizophrenia - science or hocus pocus?
Are the genticists really on to something? Or is there, in all honesty, as much hope of finding a schizophrenia gene as there is finding the Loch Ness monster? A unique examination of the scientific research into the schizophrenia diagnosis.

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