On Tuesday 9 July Rai, our Chair, spoke with Horatio Clare and Prof. Femi Oyebode about her experience of hearing voices and going to Hearing Voices Groups as part of the ‘Is Psychiatry Working?’ series. We hope that this show helps to challenge some of the stigma still surrounding voice-hearing and encourage more helpful conversations.
The show also features the ‘Talking with Voices’ research project, supporting people to engage with the voices that they hear.
The BBC says: In this new series of Is Psychiatry Working, writer Horatio Clare and his co-host, psychiatrist Professor Femi Oyebode focus on some of the most successful ways of treating mental health conditions – both the established and the more experimental. The world of mental illness, what it is and how we understand it, the embattled position of psychiatry and its patients was the matter of the first series, explored through the story of Horatio’s own breakdown. The landscape travelled – both in terms of access to good mental health care, and psychiatry’s progress – was quite bleak. Now, in the spirit of hopefulness, Femi and Horatio explore a new and important question – what is working in psychiatry now?
With the help of Rai, who has a schizophrenia diagnosis, we look at the way the Hearing Voices Network is changing the view psychiatry has of auditory hallucinations. And we explore how new talking therapies could help people deal with sinister voices and paranoia.
Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020xrm