The next seminar in the 2015 Hearing the Voice Research Seminar series, featuring a presentation by Dr David Smailes (Postdoctoral Research Associate in Psychology, Durham University) on ‘Tailoring Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to Sub-types of Voice-hearing’, will take place in the Collier Room in the College of St Hild & St Bede, Durham University (number 30 on this map) on Thursday 12 March 2015, 5 pm – 7 pm.
Abstract: Several meta-analyses have suggested that cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for psychosis has small to moderate effects on positive symptoms (e.g., auditory hallucinations and delusions). However, a recent meta-analysis reported that these effect sizes are substantially inflated because of methodological problems in many trials of CBT for psychosis. In this talk, I will focus on CBT for voice-hearing and will suggest that one reason for its limited effectiveness is that current interventions tend to treat voice-hearing as a relatively homogenous experience, despite evidence that voice-hearing is highly heterogeneous. These heterogeneous experiences do, however, appear to cluster into a set of subtypes, and it is possible that CBT for voice-hearing may be more effective if it is tailored to the subtype that a voice-hearer reports. I will describe a novel CBT for voice-hearing manual that Hearing the Voice has developed in collaboration with a local clinical psychologist, which encourages clinicians to tailor CBT to subtypes of voice-hearing, and will discuss the promise and limitations of this kind of approach.
The Hearing the Voice Research Seminar series is designed to provide a platform for HtV researchers to share the detailed findings of their research and gain feedback from a wider audience. Anyone with an interest in Hearing the Voice research is welcome to attend. If you would like to reserve a place, please fill in our online registration form.
If you have any queries about the event, please contact Victoria Patton.