Strategies for Dealing with Distressing Voices

The following  is a culmination of discussions of different strategies which can help you to cope with distressing voices from the yahoo group "Voice Supporters" for people who hear voices, and those who support them either as friends, family members or professionals.

1) Distraction - put the radio on, or even better, an ipod with headphones.

2) Talk back to the voices. Challenge them. Ask them to go away.

3) Selective Listening - Give your voices an hour or so a day when you will listen to them. Bargain with them and say that if they are quiet now (at work for instance, or in the pub) then you will listen to what they have to say at an agreed time.

4) Talk to other people (who you can trust and who won't overreact) about your voices. Discuss what they say, how they say it, who the voices may represent. The more you understand your experience of voice hearing the easier it will become to cope with it.

5) Read about voices. Some good books are: "Recovery An Alien Concept" by Ron Coleman, "Accepting Voices" by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher, and "Hearing Voices a Common Human Experience" by John Watkins

6) Learn some relaxation techniques. If you become anxious because of your voices, use these techniques to get rid of the anxiety.

7) Write a letter to your voices. Maybe explain to them how you feel about them, how you would like them to behave, or anything that comes into your mind.

8) If you are out in public and you want to talk back to your voices without the stigma of supposedly talking to yourself, get a mobile phone, pretend to dial, and talk into that instead. If you don't have a mobile phone, ask around your friends to see if any of them have one which they don't use any more (remember the phone doesn't have to work).

9) Some people find that yawning or opening their mouths can help to block the sound of the voices.

10) Earplugs in one or both ears (experiment!) can help to block out disturbing voices.

11) Focus on one word and one word only. Repeat it, either in your mind or out loud, again and again. This turns the focus away from the voices and onto something else.

12) Take one day, one hour or one minute at a time during the difficult patches.

13) Do something fun that you enjoy once in awhile to reward yourself for putting up with the voices. You deserve it!

The VoiceSupporters Yahoo Group is open to anyone interested in the subject of hearing voices.

Eye Test Identifies People with Schizophrenia

By Traci Pedersen Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. 

Impaired eye movements have long been associated with schizophrenia. In a new study, researchers have discovered they can distinguish people with and without schizophrenia through the use of simple eye movement tests with over 98 percent accuracy.
“It has been known for over a hundred years that individuals with psychotic illnesses have a variety of eye movement abnormalities, but until our study, using a novel battery of tests, no one thought the abnormalities were sensitive enough to be used as potential clinical diagnostic biomarkers,” say Dr. Philip Benson and Dr. David St. Clair, lead authors on the paper.
The series of tests included smooth pursuit, free-viewing, and gaze fixation tasks.
In smooth pursuit, people with schizophrenia have difficulty following slow-moving objects smoothly with their eyes. Their eye movements tend to fall behind the moving object and then catch-up with the moving object using a rapid eye movement, called a saccade.
In the free-viewing test — in which a picture is shown — those with schizophrenia follow an abnormal pattern as they look at the picture, compared to the general population.
In the fixation task, the individual is asked to keep a steady gaze on a single unmoving target, which tends to be difficult for individuals with schizophrenia.
In each of the eye tests, the performance of individuals with schizophrenia was abnormal compared to the healthy volunteer group. The researchers then used several methods to model the data. Combining all the data, one of the models achieved 98.3% accuracy.
“We now have exciting unpublished data showing that patterns of eye movement abnormalities are specific to different psychiatric subgroups, another key requirement for diagnostic biomarkers.
“The next thing we want to know is when the abnormalities are first detectable and can they be used as disease markers for early intervention studies in major mental illness,” say the researchers.
“We are also keen to explore how best our findings can be developed for use in routine clinical practice,” they add.
Typical neuropsychological assessments are time-consuming, expensive, and require highly trained individuals to administer, while these eye tests are simple, cheap, and take only minutes to conduct.
A predictive model with such accuracy could potentially be used in clinics and hospitals to aid doctors by supplementing other symptom-based diagnostic criteria.
Source: Biological Psychiatry

How to Recover from Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia differs from other mental illnesses in the intensity of care that it requires. A comprehensive treatment program includes:

•     Antipsychotic medication, which forms the cornerstone of treatment for schizophrenia
•     Education of the individual about his / her illness and treatment
•     Family education and support
•     Support groups and social skills training
•     Rehabilitation to improve the activities of daily living
•     Vocational and recreational support
•     Cognitive therapy
•     Integrated addictions program

The course of schizophrenia varies, but in most cases it involves recurrent episodes of symptoms. Although available pharmacological treatments can relieve many of the symptoms, most people with schizophrenia continue to suffer some symptoms throughout their lives.

Appropriate treatment early in the course of the disease and adherence to continued and adequate treatment are essential to avoiding relapses and preventing hospitalization. During periods of remission, whether spontaneous or due to treatment, the individual may function well. Newer medications (and improved dosage guidelines for older medications) have substantially reduced the prevalence of severe neurological side effects that were once commonly associated with long-term pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia.

Optimizing the functional status and wellbeing of individuals with schizophrenia requires a supportive family and wide range of services, including institutional, community, social, employment and housing services. Ideally, multidisciplinary community treatment teams provide these services.

Social skills training strives to improve social functioning by working with individuals to resolve problems with employment, leisure, relationships and activities of daily life.

Timely admission to hospital to control symptoms may prevent the development of more severe problems.

Marijuana May Hold A Key

The main ingredient in marijuana, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) can trigger psychotic episodes and worsen the symptoms of schizophrenia. This is a fact. But there is another substance found in marijuana, Cannabidiol (CBD), that may be a key to helping reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia with fewer side effect.

A research team led by Markus Leweke of the University of Cologne in Germany studied 39 people with schizophrenia who were hospitalized for a psychotic episode. Nineteen patients were treated with amisulpride, an antipsychotic medication that is not approved in the U.S., but is similar to other approved drugs. The remaining 20 patients were given CBD. Neither the patients nor the scientists knew who was receiving which drug. At the end of the four-week trial, both groups made significant clinical improvements in their schizophrenic symptoms, and there was no difference between those getting CBD or amisulpride.

 “The results were amazing,” said Daniel Piomelli, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the University of California-Irvine and a co-author of the study. “Not only was CBD as effective as standard antipsychotics, but it was also essentially free of the typical side effects seen with antipsychotic drugs.”

That is a huge point since one of the reasons people stop taking their medication is because the severe side effects are so discouraging.

“The real problem with CBD is that it’s hard to develop for a variety of silly reasons,” said Piomelli. Since it comes from marijuana, there are obvious political issues surrounding its use. Extracting it from the plant is also expensive.

Researchers are working to develop synthetic versions of CBD that would avoid such hurdles.

The study is published online in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

Rethinking Madness

In the midst of a successful career as a hang gliding instructor and competition pilot (winning a World Champion title and multiple National Champion titles), Paris Williams suddenly found himself plunged into a profound struggle with experiences that would have likely resulted in the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder.

Instead of entering the psychiatric system, and he embarked upon a journey of healing and self discovery. He has spent over a decade deeply exploring both Eastern and Western under-standings of mind and consciousness, studying intensive meditation from a number of different meditation masters around the world, earning a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, working in a number of different settings supporting people struggling with challenging and extreme experiences, and conducting a series of pioneering research studies at Saybrook University on recovery from schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

In his new book "Rethinking Madness", Dr. Paris Williams takes the reader step by step on a highly engaging journey of discovery, exploring the mainstream understanding of schizophrenia, while crafting a more hopeful vision of recovery.

Visit Dr. Paris Williams at www.rethinkingmadness.com

Jesse Campbell - Love Will Be There

This is a beautiful song Jesse Campbell "Love Will Be There" and a heartfelt video that tells important facts about schizophrenia.

Treatment Adherence

When someone with schizophrenia stops taking medication or skips other treatments, it can be frustrating and difficult for loved ones. You may naturally feel powerless. However, you have more influence than you realize. Here are several ways you can help.

• Make your support contingent on adherence. It’s common for loved ones to support the person financially and provide them with a place to live.
• Help them find effective treatment. Get your loved one involved in therapy and working with an experienced psychiatrist.
• Set up reminders for medication. Use pill containers, checklists and signs to make remembering to take medication much easier.
• Try injectable medication. With an injection, the person does not have to face the decision every day about taking medication, and remind themselves every day that they have an illness.

Charlie Rose Brain Series 2: Schizophrenia

This is a one hour talk show Charlie Rose Brain Series 2: Schizophrenia with Eric Kandel of Columbia University, Danny Hurley, Steven M. Paul of Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornelia Bargmann of Rockefeller University, Judith Rapoport of The National Institute of Mental Health, David A. Lewis of University of Pittsburgh.

Danny Hurley is the person who talks about his own experience with schizophrenia. The caring people at this roundtable are at the forefront of schizophrenia research and recovery help. It's an intelligent discussion of the history of schizophrenia and where we are at now in dealing with schizophrenia.

I was interested to hear about the genetic basis of schizophrenia research and to find that there is a link between schizophrenia and autism.