Wednesday 23 April 2008

The Doctor Who Hears Voices

I recently watched a TV programme called The Doctor Who Hears Voices, broadcast on the 21st of April 2008, on Channel 4 at 10 p.m. The programme basically showed, that how someone who heard negative and intrusive voices, could be helped to recover or cope, and get back into work, using psychotherapy, and without psychiatric drugs, coercion, or hospitalisation.

This was however, a psychologist (Rufus May), helping one individual client (played by an actress with the name of Ruth, to protect the identity of the real person), and I wondered how this could work, or be put into place, for everyone who hears negative and intrusive voices. It would require a lot of trained professionals and resources, and which I'm not sure would ever be delivered by any government. Rufus May had himself in the past heard voices, but I didn't feel that enough was said about his own hearing voices experiences, or how he coped with them or recovered.

I thought the programme was quite good, but I was concerned that the very beginning of the programme - when Rufus May was demonstrating what it's like to hear a voice - could be triggering to some psychiatric diagnosed people, because the voice was saying "Go cut and kill yourself, and kill others!" etc., and that this might have prevented some people from watching the rest of the programme.

There was also very little in the programme, about voices being positive in tone and content, except one part of the programme at the end, where Ruth said that her voices went away for a few days, that she missed them on that occasion, and that they sometimes made her laugh when they took the mickey out of other people. I could relate to the fact that the contents of the nasty voice Ruth heard, was that of a guy who used to bully her at secondary school for two years; as I was also bullied at secondary school for two years, and have heard the voices of my tormentors in the past, when I've been very unwell.

It was good that so-called delusions, were shown to have a personal and social meaning to them, in the programme, but I didn't really understand the ending of the programme. It seemed to me, that a huge chunk of information had been left out. Ruth went back to work in the end, and said she felt more powerful than the voice. I take it that she still heard the voice, but it had less control over her. This left me wondering though, had she recovered? and what was the full process of that recovery?

All in all, it was good to have another programme broadcast on hearing voices, and I'll look forward to the next hearing voices programme called Am I Normal?, broadcast on the 28th of April 2008 on BBC 2 at 9 p.m.. This forthcoming programme might show the more overall positive aspects of hearing voices, as it will be about hearing voices and spirituality.

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