ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1583370
Staff and Voice Hearer Perspectives on Hearing Voices Groups in the NHS: A Mixed-Methods Cross-Sectional Survey
Provisionally accepted
- 1Division of Psychology and Mental Health, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, The University of Manchester, Manchester, England, United Kingdom
- 2Psychosis Research Unit, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 3Complex Trauma and Resilience Research Unit, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Manchester, United Kingdom
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For over 40 years, Hearing Voices Groups (HVGs) have provided a space for individuals distressed by hearing voices to share their experiences openly. Most of these groups have existed in the community and adhere to a unique ethos which, at times, may be antithetical to that of mental health services. Recently, HVGs have started to be run within statutory services, including the UK's National Health Service (NHS), raising questions about the practical and ideological barriers and facilitators to their successful implementation. NHS staff (N=49) and HVG members (N=26) took part in a mixed-methods survey aimed at understanding their perspectives on delivering HVGs in the NHS. Overall, both staff and HVG members expressed enthusiasm for HVGs in the NHS, recognising their role in fostering peer connection, though staff raised concerns about risk management and HVG members questioned whether NHS-run groups could fully uphold HVG ethos. Whilst HVGs offer a promising user-led approach, further research is needed to understand precisely how to run these types of groups in statutory services.
Keywords: voice hearing1, Hearing Voices Network2, peer support3, NHS staff4, survey5
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 23 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Branitsky, Morrison, Longden, Bucci and Varese. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alison Branitsky, Division of Psychology and Mental Health, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, England, United Kingdom
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