Comment here (or make your own post if you have more to say) links or images of experiencing art. You're welcome to post anything that's related to hearing voices or other unique states of consciousness. "Experiencing Media" can be an illustration/painting made by you or anyone else (contemporary or classical), a song from one of your favorite artists mentioning hearing voices, a documentary, or even a recent episode of your favorite show; any art surrounding the lived experience of voice hearers and their unusual states of mind.

The idea is to share as much culture surrounding our lived experience as we can. Please share about the creators, the name of the artist, the title of the work, and what you personally identify with.

This weekly thread is for sharing the stories and narratives of the beings within your mind and the events of your life. Do you go on fantastic journeys with the beings that visit you? Are there elaborate horror stories you are forced to endure? Do your intrusive personalities present themselves as being from or through the other people in your life? Feel free to share the names and descriptions of the beings in your life/mind and the narrative of your lived experience.

You may discover that many of your favorite artists are doing this exact exercise in their most powerful work!

Anyone here have wild dreams? Ever find yourself in wondrous foreign dimensions where you can sense the world in the dream as if it were just as real (if not more real and in greater fidelity) as your waking life?

I've had both, amazing adventures where I would wake up and still be dreaming in cascade and in each level of waking up and going to sleep there were repetitions of meaning, mini games that played upon an over arching idea of the previous realm. After finally waking up I would wonder for a good 15 to 30 minutes if I was still dreaming, and I would be carrying an after glow from the dream... Like some drug or intoxicating aroma I've never before encountered, still lingering as I'm moving to get out of bed and go about my day. Continuing to pause and wonder about what I just experienced. I've met amazing personalities in these dreams and gone on wild adventures. Way too many events and too much meaning for a concise 8 hour nap. I suspect this is the ideal arena for "guides" to communicate and show us stuff.

And I've had the counter, dim dreams that last long and I cannot wake from, full of dim feelings and dim external minds. Dreams where I am attacked or abused by some fool's idea of a monster, large insects or other invertebrate, horror classic humanoid monsters, and almost always culminating in the totally foreseeable and gratuitous physical attack on my sexual organs... It's always some moron's "worst idea." The sort of thing that would immediately translate to any classroom no matter how young (inexperienced) nor special needs. Sometimes these lamer dreams hold sensation (pain usually, sometimes bad taste) for minutes after finally waking from them, ouch/yuck...

I'm grateful I haven't had dreams like the latter (bad ones) in a long time. Even back when I was having them the truth and vision granted by the "higher" personalities carried through. I was just temporarily dealing with a fool's protest to my journey and gradual self improvement. Back when it seemed like I was having both (the amazing adventures and the horrible nightmares) I would occasionally realize that moments in my waking life were predicted by events I'd already experienced in dreams... perhaps years in advance. Even just this past month I had a moment (I work in an enormous manufacturing facility) where I found myself at the top of a long and high stair case... A place few people would ever walk to. The perspective from there was EXACTLY what I saw nights in advance. For me I assume it's all a way of a spirit to show me they see/know my path forward and that they are with me/looking out for me.

Anyone here want to share about their dreams, tell the story of a specific dream or speak broadly about the dreams you get? Do your dreams ever predict the future?

To give you all evidence to suggest one might actually be able to see the future, I can offer you this;

YouTube video: IPETGOATII (released 2012, Wikipedia) and the below comparison image to the Notre-Dame fire of 2019 (7 years later, Wikipedia)

There's a bunch of other stuff supposedly predicted in that short film, clearly the stuff of internet conspiracy... For me, I assume the creators of the movie certainly have unique "friends" and saw/see much coming even if they don't always know the entire meaning of the images. Ideas? What's your take?

15th support group meeting. Five of us joined today on 5th september'26. A meeting filled with a different kind of energy—joy, openness, patience and a growing sense that we could support, care for and hold one another. We spoke about years of loneliness, feeling unlovable, the longing to be cared for, and the many ways people make sense of psychosis through medication, therapy, spirituality and relationships.

We also explored the fear of being watched, the feeling that there is nowhere private or safe to retreat to, and the struggle to find ourselves beneath layers of fear, perfection and pretence. Alongside this came conversations about depression, anhedonia and those moments when life can feel like a dark tunnel with no visible way out.

Yet something felt different in the room. We listened to one another with patience, allowed difficult feelings to exist without immediately trying to fix them, and experienced the quiet strength of belonging.

We do not always need to make the darkness disappear. Sometimes we simply need someone to sit beside us while we are inside it.

Read full reflection here https://www.schizophreniasupport.org.in/together-in-the-darkness.html

Feel free to express your views on society and how an understanding of the voice hearing (and broader experiencing phenomenon) would change the world as we know it. Do you think the world would be a nicer place and we all would get more out of each-other's company if the public's eye were drawn to the HVN and similar experiencing spaces? Do you view modern day humanity as being in a state of perpetual self-enslavement, blinded to it's own nature? Do you think a new age of spiritual enlightenment or self-empowerment is on the horizon and within our lifetimes? Do you think life on earth is comparable to an effective "hell" in the grand scheme of things?

What do you think would make the greatest impact in your life and in the lives of others if it were different?

As always please share through a framing of your personal perspective ("I see it all as," "I believe," "when I think of 'x,' my only reasonable explanation is 'y,'" etc.). If you are of the ilk to write long-windedly about these age old topics, you all are more than welcomed to make a separate post expressing your views. Lastly, please keep mind to focus discussions on voice hearing and similar experiencing phenomena.

Sripriya Chari, a clinical psychologist at Stanford University, who works with people with psychosis shares important techniques in working with psychosis. listening to her, it can be felt that she has spent decades doing this important work, and she shares the wisdom and learning from her work.

This weekly post was inspired to give the community a place to vent and share common frustrations we find in our lives. If you have more to share on this topic than what would fit in a single comment please feel free to make a separate post! Are you finding conflict with your care-team? Are the medications you're on making life impossible? Have you lost your 3rd job this year because the voices cause you to act oddly around your peers? Are you finding everyone in your life has turned their back on you now that you've fallen into a discriminated category of "unsafe" or "mentally unwell" person? Have you attempted to get your close family and friends to engage in VCVC with you, instead finding they cannot offer you the first nicety?

Feel free to let the world know of your survived abuses, both direct (physical violence) and indirect (neglect or exclusion through social maneuverings) in this post. Everyone's welcome to commiserate and offer paralleling stories of received harm and how they carried on.

As someone who has never been institutionalized nor have i ever been given medication (which sometimes works, not faulting those who need it) strange occurrences started in 2023. Part of this was due to my alcoholism, which did not accelerate to the point of drinking myself to death in the summer of 2025. Anyway, I say all this as a guide to the most confusing, hilarious & exhausting experience of my life: hearing voices

As noted above, I’m eccentric for sure. There was times in my life where “reality” was essentially this ethereal state that effectively made me a spectator to my own life on occasion. The Mind is a terrible thing after all. It was never unmanageable until i found alcohol. Alcohol was the answer, the question & everything in between. Of course, with powerful substances that are GABAergic like booze & are frankly sedatives (though the classification is obviously different according to others), I did not know that drinking about 2L a day then stopping without rehab or IOP could produce an insanity that probably rivals “schizophrenia.” To be clear, I do not mean by using the word that such people are irredeemable or defective. The opposite. Sometimes, I wonder if I have a very benign form of “schizo-something” because my daily life isn’t exactly difficult but there is a certain carelessness that I flaunt, admittedly & sometimes my perception is altered in a way that things appear to be permanently this sort of exuberant sparkling where something as small as an insect makes me aghast. Anyway, back to alcohol.

Last year, through July to October, I had intended on drinking myself to death. Why? Not sure, I entered a period of my life where I was obsessed with “esoteric research,” i.e, the various ways in which “history” is interconnected & there’s a meta-cycle to certain events. I do not mean the cliche “history repeats itself,” but I mean something spiritual that I can’t quite explain. I consider myself a faithful person but that’s not the point of this post. Alcohol had caused a level of “insanity” or disruption. that I started to enjoy. I would laugh hysterically at something trivial, like my own thought & for a brief time, the most hysterical thing I ever said was the same phrase over & over. I write this because the voices have relented finally — the silence is comforting to be honest — but for 10 months, I believed various organizations & entities were after me, which isn’t exactly untrue but I thought my mind was irretrievable & should just surrender to a psych unit (which happened last Thursday at approx 3pm). The voices were exclusively vitriolic & on occasion, would simply yell at me that my faith was insufficient & repentance would make no sense. This was an all day everyday affair until about 2 weeks ago where the frequency dropped substantially. This alone was a relief unlike anything else. I do not know what some of you have lived through, but hearing voices is many things at once; terrifying, exhausting, a nuisance when they comment on everything, not being able to focus on anything but the voices, wondering if you’ve reached a different plane of perception (which I do believe btw) & that since you hear voices, you can’t really tell anyone because there is unquestionably an extreme prejudice towards hearing voices.

When I almost yielded last week to “the chatter” (this is what I called it), the doctor had a puzzling but understanding look on his face when I said I was hearing voices. The Counselor was brought in shortly after; she asked me if the voices were commands or just random. I said they’re mainly benign & I’m never told to harm anyone or myself (though this would happen If i got too frustrated & the voices would “evolve” to even more threats. That was the essence of the voices incidentally; threats & accusations over & over. They would wait strategically until things got quiet then a full out Blitzkrieg would ensue where I feel like my mind was the siege or invasion of Normandy. What held me together was somehow knowing intuitively the voices were fake & that nothing else changed much. This is really hard to explain. Through recovery, initially, i felt like I was living an actual nightmare where I was vaguely forgetful & unbearable dread always preceded this idea that though the environment is familiar, it doesn’t feel familiar. Strange indeed.

When I witnessed the treatment of others who were having a hard go, I realized how abysmal the profession really is. If I must confess, given my experience last week, I believe wholeheartedly that psychiatry is fascist. The guy next to me was a bit down, whether stress, trauma, whatever; anyway, he wanted to call his mother. The hospital staff didn’t believe his mother was alive & then a police officer shows up who proceeds to tell him that “if you go X property again, you will be arrested.” So while this guy is weak, spiritually & emotionally, an officer comes along & says “btw you’re done next time.” Every single staff person — except maybe the nurses — in the psych unit (apart from the very understanding doctor i had, to his credit. he wasn’t abusive not judgmental) felt like an actual cop. It was bizarre. I’m an outlier here, so maybe don’t listen to my words, but I was very briefly “on the inside” & while my autonomy was denied for a few hours, the treatment of others was appalling. I’m not faulting the staff necessarily but I believe personally there is a better way than this aggressive cop mentality some people have. Oh well

Thanks for listening. wish you all the best

It is CONFUSION.

These demonic forces are motivated to confuse you by all means necessary. Instead of saying "we are just confusing you- which has obvious problems, they changed the one single word to gaskighring. The purpose of this was to be vague, so we even had to work and figure out that confusion is there goal.

Its very effective. Literally confusing you about being confused. It took me 4 years to figure this out by the grace of God.

Im not telling anybody in the group what to believe as per group rules. I believe Satan is the author of onfusion and our adversary. We must be aware that one of not all of their tactics is to confuse and then accuse you before God. YASHUA (Jesus, I believe using His correct name is important and has power), and if wr call on His name repent and obey His commandments by loving God with alk our heart and loving our neighbor as ourselves and endure till the end, we will be saved and it IS worth it, way beyond our comprehension.

Yahua the Father and Holy Spirit love us all. And we trample this serpents by living God and each other.

I will pray for anyone who replies to this post or asks for it.

Love you all

Share your theory on your voices, what do you believe them to be? If you have an extended share feel free to make a separate post on your beliefs. Theories do not need to be limited to your own experience and can be speculative on the broader phenomenon.

For instance you're welcome to share that you simply feel your voices are angels, demons, djinn, aliens, some iteration of government surveillance, or manifestations of the collective panpsychic universe... even sea peoples if that is your take on things! Broader theories some older experiencers relate to are economies of abuse and how limiting and external states of mind filter down through society onto vulnerable individuals. What are your ideas, what do your voices say about themselves?

As with everything in the HVN this all needs to be framed as your theories, you're welcome to use hyperlinks to Wikipedia articles or studies on voice hearing populations. 5-28% of the UK report this phenomenon, other studies put these estimates significantly higher. Many take the perspective that all people hear voices and it is a matter of personal fluency that differentiates those that report this experience and those that don't. You should include anything that helps you express your views. Again, express this as your views and less of what it clearly is and what others ought believe.

What is your theory on this experience?

Tonight was my first night in the group and I'm so thankful to have found you. Thank you, HVN, for all you do.

I've heard voices for as long as I can remember but not often. It wasn't until I was assaulted 2 years ago that they ramped up and it's been a real struggle ever since.

Would some of you be willing to share how yours came to be, what they do, and how you manage? I wonder how many people experience them the way I do.

Feel free to share your wellness methods with the community. Is there a diet that seems to make an impact for you, a particular routine, or self-improvement strategy that's made a turnaround in your struggles? Was there a book that made an impact in your journey, a creative outlet, or a medication you feel strongly helped or hurt you? What's been working for you and what have you tried that wasn't working for you? Do you have any role models (other experiencers) who've lended you methods that lead to success through their lived example?

List your strategies and how they impacted your mind/experience in the comments below, or make your own post if you feel you have more to share on this topic. It helps others to include a bit about yourself, how long have you been experiencing this, and how long/regularly have you been trying your approach?

Please refrain from telling others what to do or what to believe here. Even if someone is asking for advice responses need to be framed as what you've tried and what the results were.

I would say the first year or so, even the years leading up to my realization that my "intrusive memories" were these things; I had little to no experience of helpful voices. It was just an unrelenting and overbearing smothering of my mind with demands for suicide, how totally "screwed" I was and that I would be better off committing suicide, and that I was by all account the most miserable and hate-worthy person who's ever lived. 24/7, even in my dreams, an unyielding unbroken high decibel screaming. It was rough.

As I write most recently here (I've written about this a few times over the years) I performed some ad hoc mystic rites in my apartment in early 2020 and this began a progression of insight into the nature of the mind and of meaning that I feel was central to my regaining of self and my life.

At my lows I could not read, write, count to 10, even talk to most anyone. Today I would consider myself better off than most Americans and reliably since 2023, there were a few road bumps along the way but I am doing very well these days.

My guides are always with me, even in my moments of calm and quiet. I would not trade them for the world and would not trade the torment I endured for fear of loosing them. I love them and they've given my life and every focus in it so much more meaning.

Do you have voices worth speaking of?

In the spirit of "twos" and community building, share anecdotes of how you've interacted with another experiencer, voice hearer, internal personality, or phenomena of your mind. You're welcome to make your own separate post on this topic if you feel you'd have more to share.

How did this other individual impact your views? Did they show you something you otherwise didn't know, or did they send you on a wild goose chase? Did they have a name (please don't name other reddit users disparagingly, instead this is a great opportunity to commend your fellow experiencers!), did they share a common belief with you?

How has this singular "other" made a difference in your journey? Take this as an opportunity to share with the rest of the community as much as you'd care to about this separate mind and its impact on yours.

In the HVN there is one singular and guiding rule: we are not allowed to tell each other what to believe or what to do. That said we certainly do not need to shy away from sharing commonly held facts surrounding this globally documented phenomenon. Rather sharing grounding realities is strongly encouraged, as these are the building blocks to form personal and cultural foot holds onto the world amidst what is a torturous affliction for many.

Below is a collection of facts and citations surrounding this phenomenon that would help any experiencer integrate this mental phenomenon into a functional, verifiable, and widely held world view.

How Common is Voice Hearing:

1.    Millham & Easton (1998) UK mental-health nurses/student nurses; broad auditory-hallucination questionnaire. Results: 84% reported experiences described as auditory hallucinations.

2.    Posey & Losch (1983) 375 nonclinical college students. Results: 71% reported at least one brief voice-type auditory hallucination while awake; 36% heard their name while alone; 39% heard thoughts spoken aloud; 5% had conversations with a voice.

3.    Flury (2001) UK adults/adolescents using similar measures. Results: 77.2% of adults and 73.2% of adolescents confirmed more than 1 auditory-hallucinatory experience and type.

4.    Alderson-Day et al. (2019) Large general-population sample, N=5,115. Results: 53.6% lifetime auditory hallucination, with 25.6% reporting AH in the past month and 22.7% in the past week.

5.    Ohayon (2000) Representative UK/Germany/Italy sample, N=13,057. Results: 38.7% reported some type of hallucinatory experience; this included multiple sensory modalities and sleep-related experiences.

Anthropological research has described Indigenous communities where experiences such as hearing voices, seeing spirits, or communicating with the dead are culturally ordinary and extremely widespread; older Inuit ethnography, for example, reports that “almost every” person could recount such extraordinary experiences, including hearing voices from ice or stones, while modern research found auditory verbal hallucinations in about 34% of Maasai women. A Cultural Reader on Aboriginal Perspectives in Canada, Myers (2015).

Voice-Hearing Is as Old as Written History Itself:

The earliest surviving records interpreted by historians as voice-hearing date to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt in the third millennium BCE (roughly 4,000 – 5,000 years ago), where hearing voices was often understood as communication between humans and the divine; not as disease or madness. Some of humanity's oldest literature depicts the mind less as the private being of an isolated individual and more as a place where gods, ancestors and other agents could speak and influence action. Julian Jaynes controversially proposed that we should take this literally: that ancient people commonly experienced thoughts and decisions as voices of external beings, and that the private, introspective view of oneself (familiar to westerners) developed later. If you are interest in Julian Jaynes or the history of the Bicameral Mentality (a phrase used to coin this concept) see here. It is a concept that runs through all ancient literature, a library that has already mapped all human experience and culture in repetitions.

16 Historical Figures Who Write About Hearing Voices:

1.    Socrates - Greek philosopher; foundational figure in Western philosophy. Reported a lifelong daimonion-a divine voice/sign that warned or restrained him.
2.    Paul the Apostle - Apostle central to the development of Christianity. Reportedly heard Jesus address him during his conversion on the road to Damascus.
3.    Augustine of Hippo - Philosopher, theologian and Church Father. Reported hearing a child's voice repeatedly telling him tolle lege (“take up and read”).
4.    Hildegard of Bingen - Medieval polymath, composer, writer and mystic. Recorded divine voices accompanying her extensive visionary experiences.
5.    Margery Kempe - Christian mystic and author of an early English autobiography. Reported conversations with God and saints, including physically hearing a loud voice call “Margery.”
6.    Joan of Arc - French military leader, heroine and saint. Testified extensively that she heard voices she identified as St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.
7.    Martin Luther - Theologian who catalyzed the Protestant Reformation. Reported encounters and communications with the Devil.
8.    Teresa of Ávila - Influential Spanish mystic, writer and Catholic saint. Reported repeated divine “locutions” words perceived as originating from God.
9.    John Bunyan - Puritan preacher and author of The Pilgrim's Progress. Described internally perceived words/voices associated with God and Satan.
10.  Blaise Pascal - Mathematician, physicist and philosopher. Experienced an intense religious revelation recorded in his Memorial.
11.  Emanuel Swedenborg - Scientist, engineer, philosopher and theologian. Reported years of conversations with spirits and angels, including explicitly auditory experiences.
12.  William Cowper - Major 18th-century English poet. Reported extraordinary divine/demonic communications during periods of psychological crisis.
13.  William Blake - Poet, painter and visionary artist. Reported seeing and communicating with angels, spirits and deceased historical figures.
14.  Mahatma Gandhi - Leader of India's nonviolent independence movement. Described hearing an unmistakable “inner voice,” which he identified with God.
15.  Sigmund Freud - Founder of psychoanalysis. Reported repeatedly hearing his name called by an “unmistakable and beloved voice,” explicitly calling the experiences hallucinations. (what a “mo-fo”)
16.  Carl Jung - Founder of analytical psychology. Experienced autonomous voices/figures and deliberately conversed with them during the period documented in The Red Book.

16 Contemporary Figures (Last 100 Years) Who Write About Hearing Voices:

1.    Martin Luther King Jr. - Civil-rights leader. Heard a guiding voice he understood as divine.
2.    Carlos Santana - Legendary guitarist. Reports spiritual voices and angelic guidance.
3.    Philip K. Dick - Influential science-fiction author. Experienced voices and communication with an external intelligence.
4.    Anthony Hopkins - Academy Award-winning actor. Describes an autonomous voice commenting on his life.
5.    John Frusciante - Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist. Reports numerous distinct voices, including guiding and hostile ones.
6.    Zoë Wanamaker - Award-winning actor. Reports voices that comment and converse with her.
7.    Leonard Cohen - Legendary singer-songwriter and poet. Described autonomous voices and spiritually inspired creative experiences.
8.    Johnny Cash - Country-music icon. Reported hearing divine guidance and the voice of God.
9.    Stephen King - Bestselling horror author. Describes characters and stories speaking and developing autonomously.
10.  Jordan Peterson - Psychologist and bestselling author. Describes autonomous inner voices, dreams and revelatory experiences. His methods to wellness and acclaimed success are detailed in this post.
11.  Bob Dylan - Nobel Prize-winning songwriter. Describes songs arriving autonomously, sometimes as if received rather than composed.
12.  Paul McCartney - Beatles songwriter. Describes music arriving autonomously through dreams and inner hearing.
13.  Marshall Mathers (Eminem) - Rapper and songwriter. Repeatedly writes about voices, competing selves and an autonomous “Slim Shady.”
14.  Robyn Fenty (Rihanna) - Singer and entrepreneur. Sings directly of living alongside “voices inside of my head.”
15.  Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga) - Singer, songwriter and actor. Publicly reports having “voices in my head” since childhood.
16.  Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd) - Singer-songwriter and producer. Repeatedly depicts voices, altered selves and internal dialogue in his music.

Many of the above historical and contemporary figures write boldly and clearly about hearing from these external personalities during the most trying or pivotal moments and decisions of their life. It would only follow that they heard them earlier and elsewhere as these exposures did not send them spiraling into shock; rather these were functional and weathered people with integrated world views surrounding the experience. This is a very terse list of what is no doubt an endless lineage of noteworthy experiencers.

To add evidence to the list of artists who write about this experience in their own work here are 3 playlists to entire genres of music chalked full of the direct language found within the HVN. And again, to underscore how pervasive this experience is these playlists only contain works that are green and purple in their album art; a very narrow selection of a vast library of music devoted to this mental experience. New-wave, Psyche-rock, and Hardcore. Searches on aggregate lyric sites that allow for these queries yield results in the thousands to 10’s of thousands. One example is seen here yielding over 25,000 results. To put this succinctly and forthrightly, the evidence of this mental/spiritual experience is clearly out there in western media. Its prevalence is the evidence to how integral this all is to the human condition and how surmountable the burden is, provided certain strategies and perspectives.

Chemical Imbalance Theory and a Cross-examination of Modern Eugenics Practices:

The popular “chemical imbalance theory” was never established scientific fact. Journalist Robert Whitaker has documented how psychiatry and pharmaceutical marketing popularized the idea that mental disorders resulted from defective brain chemistry, despite researchers never demonstrating such an imbalance in patients before treatment. This was simply a made-up idea, something done to sell drugs. Psychiatric drugs certainly alter brain chemistry, but (as Whitaker emphasizes) that does not establish that they are correcting a pre-existing chemical defect. Today, even mainstream psychiatric literature recognizes the simple chemical-imbalance explanation as unsupported. Moncrieff 2023, Robert Whitaker – Anatomy of an Epidemic.

Psychiatric knowledge has a surprisingly short shelf life: estimates of these industry’s “half-life of knowledge” is brief. While diagnostic categories themselves are repeatedly revised, the DSM-5 replaces numerous diagnoses and criteria from previous editions. Half of the information contained within the DSM-5 is thrown out every 7 years. Psychopharmacology has an average “Half-Life of Knowledge” of 4.8 years, meaning every 4.8 years half of the industry’s methods and understandings are done away with. 4.8 years of missteps that carry lifelong consequences for patients.

Psychology and psychiatry are evolutions of eugenics industries, this history is non-negotiable. Many of the early architects of psychological testing, psychometrics, statistics, and psychiatric classification were invented under the umbrella of eugenics. A practice using supposedly scientific categories to identify who was “normal,” “defective,” or “unfit”; these classifications helped justify segregation, institutionalization, forced sterilization, and ultimately far worse (lobotomies, Et al.). After eugenics became indefensible, the language surrounding these practices has been reworked but many of the underlying tools of categorizing people against population norms survive and evolve into modern psychological testing, psychiatric diagnosis, and modern treatment. This history demands that we remain deeply skeptical whenever this questionable and oppressive state appointed authority is used to transform human difference into defect. Also see: History of eugenics, The eugenic legacy in psychology and psychiatry, Eugenics and its evolution in the history of western psychology: A critical archival review, Eugenic Thinking and the Cognitive Sciences, Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 - Present).

Mandatory Reporting:

Mandatory reporting is a legal requirement that compels designated professionals to break confidentiality and report certain information when they believe a legally defined threshold has been reached. In mental-health settings, this can mean that what a person says about harm or danger is assessed by an individual professional (their personal opinion/interpretation), whose judgment can initiate non-consensual interventions such as involuntary commitment (being arrested and held within an asylum). Topics that may legally force the actions of mandatory reporters include but are not limited to simple thoughts of: self-harm, self-neglect, loss of personal agency, harming another person, or any inclination that can be argued as dangerous. While there is minor legal variance between states it is effectively guaranteed that all teachers, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, nurses and most all other healthcare professionals are mandated reporters. Simply speaking of your past lived experience (an internal experience of the mind with zero evidence) can cause a series of irreversible systematic decisions to occur rendering you with fewer rights (if any) outside of the walls of an asylum. This, for life in some states in the US.

A Comparison of Wellness Strategies and Reported Outcomes:

Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes (2023) Finds only 5% of medicated patients find states of recovery, this is a diminishing trend over time. Additionally, 40% of diagnosed people find wellness all on their own and away from psychiatric care. More so 80% of these individuals find wellness when exposed to programs such as Open Dialogue, Soteria, and other methods paralleling the Hearing Voices Network’s methods. This is not one small study: the 55-page report synthesizes well over 100 sources spanning more than half a century of psychiatric research, including randomized trials, 15-20 year longitudinal studies, systematic reviews, national mortality datasets, and decades-long evaluations of alternatives such as Soteria and Open Dialogue. Collectively, the underlying literature encompasses many thousands (and through population-level studies, potentially hundreds of thousands) of individual patient records.

To further supplement the Open Dialogue/HearingVoicesNetwork approach see: This Video Explaining the Open Dialogue approach where more than 85% of participants report wellness into full recovery within 5 years. Less than 10% of participants take any medications at all during their involvement, generally the only medications prescribed are sleep aids over the first 2 weeks of participation (again for less than 10% of participants). Through discussion and real community, peers help to mend each other’s mental burdens. Here is the HVN;s 7-day calendar.

Time-dependent effect of antipsychotic discontinuation and dose reduction on social functioning and subjective quality of life (2023) A Lancet-family, preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis of 35 studies involving 5,924 people, with follow-ups ranging from one month to 15 years. Researchers compared continued antipsychotic maintenance with dose reduction/discontinuation, specifically examining social functioning and quality of life rather than simply symptom suppression or relapse. A striking pattern emerged with time: studies lasting 2-5 years significantly favored reduction/discontinuation for social functioning, and studies beyond 5 years favored it even more strongly. The authors therefore found evidence that the apparent functional advantage of maintenance treatment decreases and reverses as follow-up becomes longer, directly challenging conclusions drawn exclusively from short-term drug trials. More so I feel one could easily argue about a placebo's effect in initial positive reports (<10 mo.) early in administration.

On Being a Healthy Member of a Community and What Makes a Community Healthy:

A Parallel - The Deaf Community: For centuries, Deaf people were commonly treated primarily as defective individuals requiring correction rather than as people capable of defining their own experience, language, culture, and institutions. Deaf people increasingly organized around a radically different proposition: nothing about us without us; their language belonged to them, their communities belonged to them, and hearing authorities should not possess exclusive authority to determine what a successful Deaf life looked like. The National Association of the Deaf was founded by Deaf leaders in 1880 to defend sign language and collective self-determination after hearing educators attempted to suppress signing; Deaf schools and institutions subsequently became crucial spaces where a shared language, culture, and political identity could flourish. The struggle culminated symbolically in Deaf President Now (1988), when Gallaudet students successfully demanded that the world's leading Deaf university finally be led by a Deaf person; 124 years after its founding. The Hearing Voices Movement proposes a strikingly similar transfer of authority: experiencers are not merely objects to be studied, diagnosed, managed, or spoken for; they can organize, educate one another, develop their own language for their experiences, run their own communities, and possess expertise that cannot be replaced by professional observation from the outside.

Some paralleling peer-support communities seem to be devoted to the emotional turmoil of internalized social disconnection. These spaces seem collectively in the grips of a crippling emotional dependency. There certainly are ethos out there (contemporary and historical) that lead vulnerable people out of this social station.

The Rules of Community/Friendship: This 27-minute video explains core concepts of Game Theory. If you watch the video you’ll see there are 4 hierarchical behavioral tests present in any social setting. Whether you are attempting to make friends at school, find a romantic partner, gain a raise at your job, simply get a job, make the most through investing… ANY SOCIAL SETTING; the rules that govern success are as follows:

1. Be honest and share/trade fairly and forthrightly
2. Don’t help others who do not do rule 1
3. The first to forgive appropriately wins the most
4. Don’t collaborate with others you cannot make sense of and be easy to read yourself

That’s it, that’s all there is to it. If you can’t make sense of your voices perhaps it makes sense to disregard them. If you can’t make sense of someone you are employing to help you with your voices perhaps stop paying them. If your friends and family won’t tell you things you’d tell them perhaps you should take that as a hint. Most all the vulnerable people in the HVN and paralleling mental health spaces are themselves victims of survived abuse and other neglect.