Agenda:

 Hearing Voices - Twin Cities is a registered group member of the Hearing Voices Network - USA, which is a national network of support groups, activists, professionals, and anyone else who identifies with being a voice-hearer and is committed to its values. The term "voice-hearer" has become an umbrella term to describe not just the experience of literally hearing a human voice speaking, but also "strange, unusual, or extreme experiences" to accommodate a wider spectrum of experiences and reflecting the belief that these experiences are not fixed and permanent, but change according to circumstance, mood, etc.

The Hearing Voices Network is quite new in the USA, spanning back just over a decade, but the model has existed in Europe since the 1980s, when the idea of running a Hearing Voices group came about from the exchanges between a voice-hearing patient Patsy Hage and her psychiatrist Marrius Romme, who decided, against the professional wisdom of the age, to listen to the content of Patsy’s voices and even help her to find other voice hearers to exchange advice and wisdom. The Hearing Voices Groups are the core of the Hearing Voices Network. They function not only as support groups for voice-hearers to discuss their experience, learn coping strategies, and explore the meanings they can derive from their experiences, but also as social spaces for people who may feel stigmatized by labels or excluding on account of their experiences to meet others and form social ties and bonds. Hearing Voices Groups are strictly non-clinical spaces where members are free to talk (or not　talk) about whatever they please without notes being taken, actions being taken against them, labels being applied to them, or any other action that may result from saying something odd or extreme in a clinical space.　

Speakers:

Kelly Watterman
Sasha Durakov
Matt Hyre
Mattie Turner
Elliot Joi  

Learning Objectives:

• Attendees will identify how the various approaches in mental health care and activism differentiate themselves from one-another, and what sorts of needs they respond to.　
• Attendees will describe how and why the Hearing Voices Network arose, the environment in which it continues to grow, the challenges it faces, and the ways in which it　distinguishes itself from the other available approaches for voice hearers (psychiatric and clinical services especially).　
• Attendees will verbalize strategies to challenge their assumptions and discover ways be more flexible in their understanding of mental or emotional difference.　

Target Audience: OTR, OTA, OTS with interest in mental health OT.

Course Level:  Introductory

Event Location: Professional Rehabilitation Consultants, Menlo Park Building, 1246 University Avenue W. Suite 100, St. Paul, MN 55104

Contact Hours: 1.5

Fee: Free MOTA members/$20.00 non-MOTA

Register Here Mental Health SIG - Hearing Voices Network