Compassionate approach to mental health management

A short educational film –  Compassion for Voices  –  produced as an innovative collaboration between King’s Clinical Psychologist  Dr Charlie Heriot-Maitland  and independent creative animator Kate Anderson, is helping to build understanding around how a compassionate approach might change the way we treat psychotic experiences in people with mental health issues.

The film is an alternative to the traditional psychosis treatment of reducing or eliminating psychotic experiences and presents a novel approach to help voice-hearers to gain control over their experiences through therapy. It charts the progression of a young man, Stuart, from being tormented by his voices, through to establishing safeness and developing the qualities needed to engage with his voices through compassionate dialogue.

With regular use in Hearing Voices Groups in the UK and US, the film has been adopted as a teaching tool in peer support groups across the world. It is also forms part of group and individual interventions as a roadmap for therapeutic change and is regularly used in international professional development courses for practitioners training in the Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) approach. It is available in 10 different languages having been translated by volunteers across the world who came across the film and circulated it to help people who hear voices in their country.

The project was supported by the  Cultural Institute  at King’s as part of the  Collaborative Scheme for Early Career Researchers.