The Hearing Voices Movement (HVM) is an international grassroots initiative composed of individuals and organizations who promote the hearing voices approach—a framework for understanding the experience of hearing voices. While mainstream psychiatry typically refers to such experiences as auditory verbal hallucinations, the movement uses the term hearing voices, which it argues is more accurate and respectful. The movement originated in the Netherlands in the late 1980s through the collaboration between voice-hearer Patsy Hage, psychiatrist Marius Romme and researcher Sandra Escher. Professor Romme died on 5th June 2026 - Vale Marius HVM regards hearing voices as a meaningful, though sometimes distressing, human experience that can be explored and understood. It supports the creation of hearing voices groups, peer-led spaces where individuals can share and make sense of their experiences. Rather than treating voice-hearing as a symptom of mental illness, HVM emphasizes approaches grounded in human rights, social justice, diversity and collective empowerment. It challenges the dominance of the medical model in psychiatry and questions the validity of diagnostic categories such as schizophrenia.
History The Hearing Voices Movement originated in the Netherlands in the late 1980s through the collaboration of voice-hearer Patsy Hage, psychiatrist Marius Romme, and researcher Sandra Escher. HVM was formally established in 1987 with the founding of the first national Hearing Voices Network in the Netherlands, Stichting Weerklank, following a meeting organized by Escher and Romme. In 1988, a group was formed in Manchester by voice-hearer Louise Pembroke and community worker Paul Baker. After receiving media attention in 1990, this developed into a national UK network. Following this, more national networks were formed, including in Austria (1992), Finland and Japan (1996), Germany (1998), Palestine (2001), USA (2010), and Uganda (2012). In 1997, the organisation Intervoice was established to support and connect hearing voices networks and initiatives worldwide. In 2009, the first World Hearing Voices Congress was held in Maastricht, Netherlands. The Melbourne Hearing Voices Declaration was launched at the World Hearing Voices Congress in 2013. It promotes the hearing voices approach as a rights-based alternative within mental health care. This was followed by the Thessaloniki Declaration in 2014.
Tenets At its core, the Hearing Voices Movement proposes that hearing voices is a meaningful human experience. Rather than seeking to eliminate voices, the movement emphasizes the importance of allowing individuals to make sense of their voices on their own terms. HVM uses hearing voices as an umbrella term that also includes seeing visions and other sensory experiences such as touch, taste, and smell. The movement views these experiences as an aspect of human difference, rather than a mental health problem. The principles of the movement closely align with the recovery model, emphasizing empowerment and human rights, and promoting holistic approaches to address problematic and overwhelming voices. Since many people live successfully with their voices, voices themselves are not viewed as the problem. Instead, the relationship between a person and their voices is considered a central issue. Research has found that people who hear voices can be helped using methods such as mindfulness-based interventions, voice dialoguing cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and self-help methods. HVM offers guidance to mental health practitioners to assist people who hear voices and may feel overwhelmed by the experience. HVM takes a critical stance toward the medical model of disability and expresses concern about an exclusive reliance on medication as treatment. They highlight that service users are sometimes discouraged from talking about their voices as these are seen solely as symptoms of psychiatric illness. Historical and anthropological critiques are referenced to illustrate how experiences like voice-hearing have been culturally devalued. In Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity, Leudar and Thomas review nearly 3,000 years of voice-hearing history. They argue that the western world has moved the experience of hearing voices from a socially valued context to a pathologised and denigrated one. Foucault has argued that this process can arise when a minority perspective is at odds with dominant social norms and beliefs. The position of the hearing voices movement can be summarised as:
Hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness. Hearing voices is part of the diversity of being a human, it is a faculty that is common (3-10% of the population will hear a voice or voices in their lifetime) and significant. Hearing voices is experienced by many people who do not have symptoms that would lead to diagnosis of mental illness. If hearing voices causes distress, the person who hears the voices can learn strategies to cope with the experience. Coping is often achieved by confronting past problems that lie behind the experience.
Theoretical overview The work of Marius Romme, Sandra Escher and other researchers provides a theoretical framework for the movement. They find that:
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