Understanding & Helping with Voices: A Presentation for Family Members

While the majority of people who hear voices aren’t negatively affected by them, this may be of little comfort if your family member is struggling to cope. When voices and visions are very intrusive, powerful or distressing, it is normal for the whole family to feel overwhelmed. The good news is that research shows recovery is possible, and you can have an important role to play. Information in this workshop will aim to give you some inspiration to find your way forward for you and your loved one.

Peter Bullimore is a voice hearer who spent ten years as a psychiatric patient. He recovered through learning holistic approaches and with support from the Hearing Voices Network. Peter now teaches on hearing voices and paranoia internationally, facilitates a support group in Sheffield, runs a training and consultancy agency, and is a founding member of the Paranoia Network. He teaches at the University of Manchester where he is also carrying out research into collaborative work between voluntary sector organizations and the university, and what recovery means from a service user’s perspective.

Peter co-authored the workbook Asking the Questions with Paul Hammersley and John Read, a guidebook about childhood trauma.

Peter has delivered teaching and workshops on holistic approaches to understanding and working with voices and paranoia for fifteen years throughout England, Scotland, Ireland North and South, Wales, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, USA, CZ Republic, and Italy.

Peter wrote the Maastricht Interview for Problematic Thoughts, Beliefs & Paranoia with Professor Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher in the Netherlands. He delivers teaching on hearing voices and paranoia internationally and has set up four Maastricht Alternative Approach Centres in the UK. These centres have been sponsored by the NHS and they now have a National Centre.

A guest lecturer at eleven Universities in the UK, Peter Bullimore is the 2019 recipient of the prestigious award Advanced Practice Interventions in Mental Health for his work teaching second and third year nursing students on the history of schizophrenia, hearing voices and paranoia and the Maastricht Interview for hearing voices which has now been implemented as curriculum in the BA Nursing Programs at Manchester, Cork & Dublin Universities.

PLEASE NOTE: Times are listed in Eastern USA time.