Hearing Voices Movement

The Hearing Voices Movement (HVM) is an international grassroots initiative composed of individuals and organizations who promote the hearing voices approach—a framework for understanding the experience of hearing voices. While mainstream psychiatry typically refers to such experiences as auditory verbal hallucinations, the movement uses the term hearing voices, which it argues is more accurate and respectful.

The movement originated in the Netherlands in the late 1980s through the collaboration between voice-hearer Patsy Hage, psychiatrist Marius Romme and researcher Sandra Escher.

HVM regards hearing voices as a meaningful, though sometimes distressing, human experience that can be explored and understood. It supports the creation of hearing voices groups, peer-led spaces where individuals can share and make sense of their experiences.

Rather than treating voice-hearing as a symptom of mental illness, HVM emphasizes approaches grounded in human rights, social justice, diversity and collective empowerment. It challenges the dominance of the medical model in psychiatry and questions the validity of diagnostic categories such as schizophrenia.

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