The science behind the voices in your head – The Australian Financial Review
Another daily ritual during which hearing voices and other unusual sensory experiences are normal is when we either fall asleep or wake up. These are called hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations. This period is also known for “eureka” moments of insight and creativity.
Whether as a means to use language socially or as the internal dialogue that helps us during self-reflection, voices of all kinds are significant and meaningful. While they imply the presence of a speaker, the relevant agent may be the unconscious self.
Mental health patients feel diminished if their voices are dismissed as random, pathological sparks of the brain. We are, after all, meaning-seeking creatures.
The Hearing Voices Network is a reaction to the over-medicalisation of the human experience. It originates strongly with the civil rights movement encompassing disability, women’s and gay rights in the 1960s and ’70s.
There are multiple branches of the Hearing Voices Network scattered across Australia. They advertise their service as a space to have the experience of auditory hallucinations normalised and supported. There is no medical advice offered. They are re-emerging in face-to-face forms after suspending their services or moving online during the pandemic.
While the movement has been criticised as being anti-psychiatry, it is promoted as a complementary service and is not antagonistic to medication. They are supported by government-sponsored mental health organisations such as the Mental Health Commission of New South Wales.
While psychiatrists may have been sceptical in the past, seeing them as a barrier to appropriate medical care, they have become part of the broader consumer and carer influences that are now a bedrock of public mental health delivery. The professional associations of psychologists and psychiatrists also have sections on their websites detailing their engagement with consumer groups.
But while the revolutionary zeal of the original movement with its civil rights origins may have dampened, the organisation is a reminder that voices of all kinds remain integral in illustrating the mysteries of the mind, influencing art, folklore and our sense of the supernatural.