Project details

Summary

Although hearing voices that other people can’t hear is a common human experience, it can sometimes cause a lot of distress and be difficult to cope with. 

Talking With Voices (TwV) is a new form of therapy that comes from the work of the International Hearing Voices Movement. It is based on the idea that what voices say may reflect real-life conflicts and difficulties in the life of the voice hearer. 

TwV believes that understanding more about the links between voices and negative events and emotions can provide useful information for helping people make sense of their experiences. In the long-term, this may also be helpful for learning new ways to cope with the voices and become less distressed by them. 

TwV involves a therapist ‘talking’ to the voice by asking it questions. The voice hearer then listens to the responses and repeats them out loud to the therapist. 

Over time, the therapist learns more about the voice(s) in order to support the voice(s) and voice hearer to develop a more peaceful relationship. In addition, the therapist and voice hearer work together to try to understand how the voices may relate to particular problems in the person’s life

What are you trying to find out?

We have already run a small study amongst 50 voice-hearers which showed that TwV was seen as an acceptable form of support and could be delivered in the NHS. However, we now want to run a much larger trial to understand whether TwV is an effective treatment and, if so, what aspects of it may be particularly helpful for people.

What does taking part involve?

We will discuss the study with you and send you more detailed information. It is completely your choice to take part or not and you can take as long as you need to decide. We would also talk to your care coordinator or doctor at this stage.

We will then offer you an appointment to check in more detail that you can take part. This will involve answering some questions about your experiences and filling in some questionnaires.

If the study is suitable for you, you will then be randomly allocated to one of two possible groups. In research trials these are called treatment arms:

a) Talking with Voices: people in this group will receive up to 26 sessions of TwV therapy plus their usual mental healthcare

b) Treatment as usual: people in this group will receive their usual mental healthcare. This way, no one is deprived of support that would otherwise be available if they had not taken part in the study.

Although people in the treatment as usual group will not receive therapy, all participants are equally valuable as it is only with a  comparison between both groups that we can understand more about Talking With Voices.

You will be invited to take part in two more research assessments, at 8 months and 14 months after you first became involved in the study. Participants in previous studies have often told us that they find these research assessments quite helpful as it can give some idea about how their mental health may have changed over time.

Who is it for?

Our study is looking for people who:

• are aged 16 or over
• have heard distressing voice(s) for at least one year
• is currently in mental health services (but not receiving individual therapy)
• would be interested in a therapist engaging directly with their voice(s)

Why is it important? 

Currently, it is not yet known whether TwV provides any greater benefit compared to treatment as usual; however, this study is designed to help answer that question and the information we gain may assist in providing better treatments in the future. This is because if TwV is shown to be effective then we will aim to make it more widely available within the NHS.

• You can find out more information about taking part in this study by downloading the key documents at the top of this page.
• If you are interested in taking part in this study, or have questions for the research team, click the button below to email us:

Email the research team