Video Resources
In this video, AMETHYST Trial Co-ordinator and Therapist, Dr. Leila Jameel, unpacks the relationship between trauma and voices. She also explores what can be done to support people with these experiences.
Did you know that people who experience lots of traumatic and stressful life events are more likely to hear voices? My name's Leila, and I'm a psychologist and a therapist working on the Amethyst trial. People who hear voices often report having experienced lots of traumatic and stressful life events such as bullying, separation from a loved one or being in scary situations. Trauma and stress can affect us in lots of different ways. It can affect our sleep, make us feel worried, on edge and alert. It's also common to have intrusive memories of past experiences and to avoid situations that remind us of those experiences. All of these factors can make us more likely to hear voices. And for some people, the links between the past experiences and the voices is very clear. For example, the voice might represent someone from their past. For others, it's less clear, but it might be that the voice is a warning signal of some kind. What can we do about this? Having therapies for hearing voices, such as those we offer on the Amethyst trial, can help some people to deal with past events and to feel more in control. Other people will need further support, which is more focused on those past experiences, and they can speak to their GP or mental health services about this. To find out more about the Amethyst trial, please click the link and fill in the expression of interest form, and someone from the team will be in touch with you. You can also visit our website, voicestherapy.com.
Around 1 in 10 people hear voices that others don't, however everyone's experience is different. This can vary in terms of what they sound like, what they say, and how they impact the person hearing them. In this video, AMETHYST Trial Therapist, Dr. Felisha Thain, explores common experiences reported by people who hear voices.
My name is Felisha. I'm a clinical psychologist and trial therapist on the AMETHYST trial, which is a therapy trial for people who hear distressing voices. Hearing voices is actually quite a common experience. It's thought that up to one in ten people will hear voices at some point in their life. Today, we'll be looking at some common types of voices that people hear. One really common category of voices that people hear are critical voices. These often sound really judgmental and insulting, and they might say things such as, “You're a burden”, “You're a failure”, “You're useless”, “You're stupid”, “You're lazy”, “It's all your fault”. Another common category of voices that people hear are threatening voices. These will often make direct threats such as, "we're going to hurt you”, “we're going to hurt your loved ones”, or we're going to get you back". People can also hear voices that might warn them about others, and they might say things like, "don't trust them”, “they're going to hurt you”, or “they're watching you." Some people's voices touch on religious themes and might say things such as, "You're cursed," or "You're the devil," "You're Satan”, or "You're going to hell." Commanding voices or voices that tell people what to do are also really common and they might say things such as switch the light off or you need to clean your house but they might also say more threatening things such as you need to hurt yourself or you need to hurt somebody else. But of course, everybody's voice hearing experience is different. Some people's voices are loud, others are quiet. For some people, they sound like they're coming from outside - for others, it sounds like it's coming from inside their head. For some people, they might sound like familiar people, people they know or have once known, or they might sound like complete strangers. And of course people can also hear positive voices as well, so some people's voices are encouraging or supportive.
In this video, Emily, one of the AMETHYST clinical research interviewers, walks you through each step of the participation process.
My name is Emily, and I'm one of the clinical research interviewers on the AMETHYST trial. In this video, I'm going to walk you through what participation looks like for those who choose to take part. If you're interested in hearing more about AMETHYST, you can start by filling out an online form, and a member of the team will be in touch to check if the study is the right fit for you. Next, we'll meet with you online to discuss the study in more detail, and it really is an opportunity for you to ask any questions so you have all the information you need before deciding whether or not to take part. If you do choose to take part, you'll complete an online initial assessment, which is an opportunity for us to discuss and understand your experiences with your voices, as well as your mental health more broadly. You'll also complete a set of questionnaires, which will give us a more in-depth understanding of your experiences. After the initial assessment, you'll be randomly allocated to receive either cognitive behavioural therapy or avatar therapy across seven 50-minute sessions. These sessions will be free and delivered via telehealth by an experienced therapist, meaning that you can access therapy from your own home or a local service. After therapy, we'll check in with you again in a follow-up assessment, and then twice after that, with three months in between each assessment. The follow-up assessment will follow a similar structure to your initial assessment and are a way of capturing how the therapies we are trialling work over time. To learn more or register interest, visit voicestherapy.com.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) focuses on how voice hearing makes someone think or feel about themselves, and the ways this can affect their life. In this video, AMETHYST Trial Therapist, Dr. Felisha Thain, breaks down how CBT can be used to help people to understand and manage their voices.
If you hear voices, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT can help you change your relationship with them. So what actually happens in CBT for voices? Let's break it down. So first, we will work together to map out the voice hearing cycle. So this means looking at triggers, like stress, low mood, and feeling isolated. We will also explore the thoughts someone has about their voices or themselves. For example, "My voice will harm my family" or "No one will love me because of my voices". Then we look at the emotions that come up, such as fear, sadness or anger. And finally, the behaviours, the things that people do in response, like avoiding others, isolating or spending long periods of time listening to and talking back to their voices. Once we understand the cycle, we can step in and intervene at different points. If low mood or stress are triggers, we might try scheduling enjoyable activities or using relaxation and breathing techniques. If we're focusing on thoughts, we could explore them in more detail too. Is there evidence that the voice is right? Are there other, more helpful explanations? Sometimes we even run experiments, like testing what happens if someone doesn't follow a voice's command. Many people find that the voice isn't as powerful as it seems. Finally, we might also target behaviours. So this could mean supporting someone to reconnect socially or helping them set boundaries with their voices so that their voices have less of an impact. The important thing is that CBT for voices isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. It's always tailored to each person's needs, goals and experiences. So we focus on what feels most relevant and helpful. Ultimately, CBT for Voices isn't about making the voices disappear or trying to change the voice. It's about helping people to regain control and feel empowered, even while hearing voices.
Professor Neil Thomas, a Clinical Psychologist and the lead AMETHYST researcher explains how mindfulness can help with hearing voices.
How can mindfulness help with hearing voices? Hearing voices, an experience up to 10% of people have at some point where they hear someone who's not there speaking to them, often saying critical or unpleasant things. So how might mindfulness help with this? So there's a couple of important ways. One is the control of attention. Mindfulness involves practising focusing your attention, for instance, on the breath, and bringing it back when your mind's wandered off or become caught up with something. So just as that may be helpful for our thought processes, people who hear unpleasant voices may find it helpful to practise keeping their mind focused on the present, rather than getting swept along by what voices are saying. A second is in learning how to sit with difficult experiences without reacting to them. Just as we can observe physical discomfort mindfully, we might observe voices mindfully, their sensory qualities, how they come and go. Now, mindfulness forms part of our repertoire for helping people who hear voices. It's not right for everyone, but may be helpful for some people, and particularly people who've got repetitive or frustrating voices. If you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can access free specialist therapy for voices via our Telehealth Voices clinic and our current clinical trial. Follow the link below and we'd be pleased to hear from you: www.voicestherapy.com
What is avatar therapy and how can it help with hearing voices? In this video, Professor Neil Thomas, a Clinical Psychologist and the lead AMETHYST researcher on AMETHYST explains.
What are some of the recent treatment advances in helping people who hear voices? Hearing voices is an experience that up to 10% of us would experience at some point. It involves hearing someone talking to you or about you that sounds as real as someone right next to you, but there's no one there. I'm Neil Thomas. I'm a Professor who specialises in voice hearing. Avatar therapy involves working with a person's developed computer-generated image to represent the voice and that's used in in role plays to help the person to identify different ways in which they might respond to their voice. So particularly important when people have got voices that are quite critical or domineering to find ways to be able to respond to them and deal with difficult to hear content from what voices are saying. Avatar therapy has been found to be effective across multiple clinical trials. Now they've been conducted in the UK, in Denmark and in other countries. That's found that avatar therapy is an efficacious treatment. By which we mean that when people receive the treatment, the ratings of how severe, like how distressing and impactful their voices are reduced more so than a comparison of not receiving any treatment or receiving more broader general counselling. However, at this point there's still some regulatory hurdles because it involves software, so it's not widely available in practise. We're currently conducting our own clinical trial here in Australia that's available Australia wide. We're doing it via telehealth. So if you were interested in accessing this before it gets full regulatory approval for roll out then please get in touch with us and click on the link below: www.voicestherapy.com.
Should people who hear voices talk back to them? Professor Neil Thomas, a Clinical Psychologist and the lead AMETHYST researcher on AMETHYST explores this topic in this video.
Should people who hear voices talk back to them? Hearing voices an experience up to 10% of people have at some point where they hear someone who's not there speaking to them, often saying critical or unpleasant things. Hearing voices very much like having someone talking at you all day. So, we know that people invariably get drawn into saying things back to the voices when they hear them, even if it's just telling them to f*** off. Most often this is silent rather than out loud. But is it all a good idea now? It depends very much on how people do it. What people tell us is that getting drawn into an angry dialogue with voices usually makes things worse, and trying to appease or placate voices can make people feel trampled on by them. But done in the right way, many people find that interacting with their voices can help. That might involve learning to be assertive with them and setting boundaries on them, or expressing that you decide what you do rather than them. It could also involve exploring why they say the things that they do. Latest therapies for hearing voices, called relational therapies, include methods for helping people to do some of these things. This spans role plays to the use of computer-generated avatars to help with the process. You can read about this in our recent scientific article: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12809787/ And if you live in Australia or New Zealand, you can access specialist therapy for voices via our telehealth based Voices clinic and our current clinical trial: www.voicestherapy.com