Experience Focussed Counselling with Voice Hearers as a Trauma-Sensitive Approach. Results of a Qualitative Thematic Enquiry.

The individual approach of the Hearing Voices Movement, Experience Focussed Counselling or Making Sense of Voices, claims a strong life context and trauma focus. This qualitative study represented the first to explore whether Experience Focussed Counselling with voice hearers, when compared to Treatment As Usual, could be considered trauma-sensitive. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews with voice hearers and mental health professionals in routine German mental health settings were analysed as part of an Applied Thematic Analysis. Overall themes identified were: trauma related; dealing with emotions; process of working with voices; intra- and interpersonal life; and coping related. Experience Focussed Counselling was considered helpful in understanding and working on unresolved trauma-related areas of distress. The same did not apply to Treatment As Usual. Findings support Experience Focussed Counselling as a trauma-sensitive intervention in hearing voices. Frontline mental health staff can potentially support voice hearers in identifying and working on trauma-related voices and emotions.

The need for experience focused counselling (EFC) with voice hearers in training and practice: a review of the literature.

A pathologizing paradigm to making sense of experiences such as hearing voices and schizophrenia remains dominant within mental health service provision. However, a real biological basis to the aetiology of hearing voices, and similar phenomena remains elusive. Antipsychotic medication, as the mainstay of the biological model, has not only been shown to have serious side effects, but is widely acknowledged as being of clinical benefit only to a limited number of people. In contrast, the Recovery Movement, and in particular the Hearing Voices Movement, have suggested that a normal life is possible despite having the experience of hearing voices. At its heart is the notion that it is possible to make sense of voices within the person's life context and to learn to live with them. Interestingly, it would seem that this approach remains largely confined to the user movement. This may in part be the result of the lack of widely accepted quantifiable and qualitative research in this area supporting such a stance. This review focuses on the current evidence base for the individual approach of the Hearing Voices Movement, which is known as Experience Focused Counselling or Making Sense of Voices. Future directions for research are indicated.