The Launch of a National Network

The Hearing Voices Network Ireland (HVNI) launched on Friday 17th
April 2015 at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin,
24 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2. The Network launch was led by Jacqui Dillon, Chair of the
Hearing Voices Network, England and founder of the Hearing Voices Movement worldwide,
Professor Marius Romme from the Netherlands, on whose research the approach was
founded.

With the launch of Hearing Voices Network Ireland, the Network joins over 30 nationally based networks around the world joined by shared goals and values, incorporating a fundamental belief that there are many ways to understand the experience of hearing voices and other unusual or extreme experiences. It is part of an international collaboration between people with lived experience, their families and professionals, to develop an alternative approach to coping with emotional distress that is empowering and useful to people, and does not start from the assumption that people who experience voice hearing have an illness.

Over the past 3 years, the Irish Institute of Mental Health Nursing embarked upon a programme of training delivered by Jacqui Dillon in the development and facilitation of Hearing Voices groups. This training was delivered nationwide with the support of the mental health nursing programmes in TCD, UCC, DCU, NUIG, St Angela’s, Sligo and UCD and the Nursing & Midwifery Planning & Development Units. Over 250 people: professionals; voice hearers; and family members attended the facilitator training and to date over 15 groups have been established across the length and breadth of the country, with more groups in the process of development.

The event also featured the official launch of the Hearing Voices Network Ireland logo
created by Michelle Dalton, Irish Voice Hearer and artist, and this website.

‘High Hopes’, Ireland’s first homeless choir provided the entertainment on the day.