Four Decades of Making Safe Spaces for All Voices: The Hearing Voices Network

In 1987 Patsy Hage said to her psychiatrist, Marius Romme, «You believe in a God we never see or hear, so why shouldn’t you believe in the voices I really do hear?» This was a reasonable question, Marius realized, and they – along with Sandra Escher – started what became the Hearing Voices Movement.

Today the Hearing Voices Network is creating safe spaces for people and their voices – and other experiences perceived as “anomalous” – in 35 countries, expanding the frontiers of meaningful human experience around the world. In recent years the network has begun to support people who wish to ally with their families and social networks to redefine the crises they face together.

This “Dialogue in a Time of Crisis” Town Hall will explore how the Hearing Voices Movement, like Open Dialogue, has been building the resources the world needs at this pivotal moment of in our collective history, and whether and how the two movements can ally in the work yet to be done. (Kermit Cole)

This is the fourth of a series of “Town Hall” online conversations exploring dialogical responses in the age of COVID made in collaboration with Mad in America and Open Excellence.