Changing Attitudes Towards Voice Hearers: A Literature Review
- PDF / 758,152 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 60 Downloads / 206 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Changing Attitudes Towards Voice Hearers: A Literature Review Caitlin Reddyhough1 · Vance Locke1 · Johanna C. Badcock2,3 · Georgie Paulik2,3 Received: 22 March 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Auditory verbal hallucinations, or voice hearing, is increasingly understood as a common experience. Despite this, voice hearers still experience a great deal of stigma, which can have serious negative impacts on the person’s experience of their voices, and their recovery. Research has demonstrated that healthcare professionals may be a major source of the stigma surrounding voice hearing, with service-level implications for the development and delivery of evidence-based interventions. Therefore, reducing this stigma is a critical intervention target. The purpose of this narrative review is to examine evidence for interventions aimed at reducing stigma towards people who hear voices, in populations of healthcare professionals, students, and the general public. The available evidence supports the use of anti-stigma interventions based around direct contact with voice hearers and education about voice hearing. However, further research is necessary in this area to confirm these findings. Keywords Stigma · Voice hearing · Auditory verbal hallucinations · Health care professionals · Attitudes · Interventions “She fancies herself”, said the female voice spitefully. “Is that it?” shouted the older male voice. “We’re looking at her now”, roared the brittle male voice. This made me very afraid again. These people were talking about me. I didn’t like that. So I walked up the crowded street to search for the voices, but I didn’t find them. Then I turned down a quiet side street. I could still hear the voices. Were the woman and men on the corner of the road? I wanted to shout out, who are you? But what if these were ordinary voices? People might think I’m crazy (Knoll 2017, pp. 68–69). The experience of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) has long been considered to be pathognomonic for psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia (Schneider 1959). However, AVHs can be experienced in the context of many other psychiatric and neurological disorders, as well as in the absence of any diagnosable disorder (Badcock et al. 2017; Sommer et al. 2012; Waters et al. 2017). Despite their relatively common nature, the experience of voice hearing remains highly * Caitlin Reddyhough [email protected] 1
Discipline of Psychology, Murdoch University, Building 440, 90 South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia
2
School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia
3
Perth Voices Clinic, Murdoch, WA, Australia
stigmatised (Phalen et al. 2019; Vilhauer 2015). Stigma is a social construction referring to the devaluation of, negative attitudes towards, and tendency to negatively evaluate a person because of a mark or sign of defect (Goffman 1963; Thornicroft et al. 2007). Stigma associated with mental il
Data Loading...
