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32 = USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Psychosis is an abnormal condition that affect the mind, where could be
some loss of contact with reality. When someone experiences psychosis, the
person's thoughts and perceptions are disturbed, and the individual may have
difficulty understanding what is real and what is not. Symptoms of psychosis
could be delusions (false beliefs), and hallucinations (seeing or hearing things
that others do not see or hear). Other symptoms could be incoherent or non¬
sense speech, and behaviour that is inappropriate for the situation. A person
in a psychotic episode could also experiences depression, anxiety, sleep prob¬
lems, social withdrawal, lack of motivation and difficulty functioning overall
(David, 2018; National Institute of Mental Health).
In the interest of examining recovery stories of patients with psychosis, we
have chosen a type of disorder that is unexplored in the Hungarian context.
Voice hearing or auditory verbal hallucinations are transdiagnostic symptoms
that could appear in psychotic disorders that exist along a continuum within
psychiatric and non-psychiatric populations. Voice hearing is predominantly
a sensory experience that occurs in the absence of external stimuli and is
typically attributed to an external source. The experience of hearing voices is
described as frightening that could lead to distress, social isolation, and func¬
tional disability. 25-50% of patients have persistent voice hearing despite
pharmacological treatment (Rosen, Jones, Chase, & Grossman, 2015).
Auditory verbal hallucinations have historically played an essential role in
diagnosing psychiatric disorders. In the last few decades, however, there has
been an increase in research on the phenomenology of hearing voices in mul¬
tiple contexts (Woods, 2013). This change in perspective is due to three factors:
(1) epidemiological data suggest several occurrences in the general population
(Johns et al., 2014; Linscott & Os, 2010; Nuevo et al., 2012) and hearing voices
can be a symptom of other psychiatric diagnoses (Johns et al., 2014; Largi et
al., 2012; McCarthy-Jones et al., 2014); (2) the new models of cognitive and
social relationships (Chadwick, 2003, 2006; Falloon et al., 2006) and hearing
voices have led to therapeutic changes and (3) the recovery model, the recovery
movement of voice hearing persons and user-centered experiences (Holt &
Tickle, 2014; Jackson, Hayward, & Cooke, 2011) play a crucial role in integrat¬
ing personal experiences and understanding into therapy.
Patsy Hague and Eleanor Longden (whose story was not made public until
the 2000s), the first self-identified voice hearers, considered the experience
to be meaningful rather than the symptoms (M. A. Romme & Escher, 2000;
M. A. Romme, Honig, Noorthoorn, & Escher, 1992). Their identities were
built around voice hearing, and they distinguished themselves from the more
common psychiatric portrayal of schizophrenic patients. They defined them¬
selves as experts by experience (as opposed to experts by profession), and
created a symmetric peer-to-peer relationship with other hearers, which led
to the development of the Hearing Voices Movement (HVM) (Corstens, Long¬