Lucky to be alive champion brings hope to beleaguered mental health services and people using those services
Media Release 1st November 2016
By any standard Ron Coleman is lucky to be alive. He has survived juvenile sexual abuse, 13 years of severe mental
illness, early onset type 2 diabetes, heart by-pass surgery 11 years ago, and two heart attacks this year alone. But the
tenacious Scot refuses to become another of the survivors of mental illness who succumb long before their time. He has
work to do and yesterday began a tour of New Zealand delivering the seven Hearing Voices training sessions he and his
wife Karen Taylor have been planning during his recovery from his last heart attack.
It is an unacceptable fact that people who experience serious mental illness have a much lower life expectancy than
those who don’t. A prime cause of the physical ravages that shorten those lives is the potent anti-psychotic medication
that is prescribed with the intention of suppressing the audible hallucinations or voices that people experience. For 25
years Ron Coleman has been educating people that it doesn’t have to be like this. His approach, which is now shared by
thousands of voice hearers around the world, involves accepting the voices, questioning them, understanding where they
come from and learning to manage and live with them. He acknowledges that medication can help but it is not the only
answer and it brings serious side effects with it which he knows too well.
Ron Coleman is a respected leader of the international hearing voices movement that has burgeoned in Europe, Australia
and the United States in recent years. It is also attracting recognition in mainstream mental health services in New
Zealand with a number of DHBs in New Zealand now introducing voices awareness training to their staff. In 2002 Ron and
Karen formed their own company, Working to Recovery, and since then have travelled the world delivering highly effective
training to both people who hear voices and professionals who work with them. In recent years they have developed
recovery houses in the UK, Italy and Australia, with plans to establish one in New Zealand soon. Recovery houses enable
people to spend a longer period of time in a safe and supportive environment focussing on their own recovery using the
skills and techniques that are taught in the Working with Voices workshops.
This is not Ron and Karen’s first visit to New Zealand – the last was in 2011 – but organisers of this tour, Adrienne
Giacon of Hearing Voices Network Aotearoa and Lisa Archibald of Kapiti’s Te Ara Korowai peer advocacy and support
service, believe that the nationwide training will provide the opportunity to effect a long anticipated step forward for
mental health services here.
Says Adrienne, “We have block bookings on this tour for staff from regional branches of large mental health NGO
providers. With an increasing number of professionals learning these skills we really hope there will be a lasting
effect of improved service for voice hearers.” Lisa adds, “The uniqueness of this training is that in most of the
workshops, people who hear voices will be learning alongside professionals that work with them. This will help break
down the “us and them” demarcation that has for too long existed in mental health services.”
With continued good luck (!) Ron and Karen will be available for interviews during their tour which started in Whangarei
yesterday with a sold out attendance. They are presently in Auckland, then travel to Christchurch, Palmerston North and Wellington before returning to
Auckland for a final workshop on 18th November.