A study exploring people’s experiences of hearing voices over time: what are the different phases of managing voices and how might these phases affect engagement with services?
Hearing voices (also known as auditory verbal hallucinations) can be a distressing experience. Negative beliefs about voices are associated with negative emotional and behavioural consequences. It is important to understand peoples’ experiences with voices and the different stages of managing them. However, there is no conclusive empirically supported theoretical model illustrating the phases that individuals may encounter when coping with their experiences over time. Typically, research has focused upon retrospective accounts of voice hearing. The aim of this dissertation was to develop an empirically supported model of the stages of voice hearing. This was achieved by examining service users’ experiences with voices over time, identifying different phases of managing voices, and exploring how these phases affected therapeutic intervention.
Chapter one is an introduction to the research in this area. Chapter two outlines the methodological processes and issues within this programme of research. Chapter three provides a systematic literature review of longitudinal studies examining distressing voices in clinical populations. Chapter four examines time one interviews and discusses the barriers and enablers to the disclosure of voices. Chapter five reports the findings from interviews with clinicians and explores the barriers and enablers to starting and continuing a conversation about voices with service users. Chapter six presents a model developed from an integration and evaluation of existing models in relation to data generated from interviews conducted longitudinally. Chapter seven summarises findings, discusses the theoretical and clinical implications, outlines the limitations of the programme of research and proposes future directions to continue the research
