DR. NEIL THOMAS: So I'm Neil Thomas.
I'm an academic in the school of psychological sciences.
One of the main programs of research
which we have here at Swinburne is
on the experience of hearing voices,
or auditory hallucinations.
It's a type of experience which people
may often report when they go to mental health services.
And might be something which they are seeking help around.
The research which we're doing is about
trying to understand this experience better.
Not solely in people with schizophrenia,
but across a range of different populations.
And also importantly, trying to find
ways of helping people who have this experience
in a persisting way, and are distressed by that experience.
Our research covers a number of areas.
So one is around understanding what the experience of voices
is like in different groups.
One is using brain imaging technology
to understand some of the mechanisms that are involved
in this experience.
The other is focusing on ways that we
can help people, developing interventions for people.
We've known for some time, that generally speaking, seeing
a psychologist for some sessions focused
on trying to help people to manage their experience better
is generally helpful.
What we've lacked, however, is a real clear understanding
about particular methods which might be most useful.
Now one of the challenges with that
is that, outside of specialist clinics like ours, that
actually getting help from people about th--
with these experiences can be fairly hit and miss.
So without us knowing exactly what methods are most helpful,
that can hamper some of our efforts to try and get
interventions out there.
One of the things, for example, that we're looking at
is the use of mindfulness.
So mindfulness is being used with a range of mental health
problems so far.
It's becoming quite popular.
We see a particular application of this as a method for people
with voices.
Because when someone is having the ongoing experience
of hearing something, it can be helpful for somebody
to be able to focus their attention on a way
from the voices to help them to become less
immersed in that experience.
Where we see the real benefits of doing this research
is in being able to inform practice and retain services.
As part of what we're doing, as well where
we're linking up with some international collaboration,
where by which one understands the experience of hearing
voices not solely as something associated with mental health
problems, but as a broader experience as well.
So doing some really interesting interdisciplinary research
thinking about how this experience has been come across
in literature in art and song.
So, for instance, Charles Dickens
spoke about how he would actually
hear the voices of his characters coming to life.
So we hear about this experience in ways
which can actually be helpful for people and facilitative.
And so if we regard this as a broader experience,
we can maybe take from some of those understandings
of this experience.
Which can also then, in turn, be applied for people that
have real problems with this.
There can still be a real fear about what mental health
problems can be like.
Particularly when people have more severe, more complex
mental health problems that are more outside of the range
of our experiences of feeling sad, feeling anxious,
and so on, and so forth.
What we know is that people who experience
more severe mental health problems--
such as schizophrenia-- that group is much more
likely to be victims of violence than to be perpetrators
of violence.