This wide-ranging book takes a person-centred approach to supporting the person and their families/carers to live with dementia and challenge the stigma attached to the condition. Divided into four parts, it starts with the voices of people with dementia themselves, as they describe their own experience and how they are living with the disease. It moves on to look at how the range of caring and support professions can help people living with dementia and their families plan and prepare for and cope better with their deteriorating condition. It then turns to practical aspects of living with dementia - dementia in the workplace, communication, safety and the role of technology and design in prolonging independence - and day-to-day considerations, such as managing insomnia and eating well. It ends with an inspiring section on the many imaginative ways people with dementia can be helped to discover and continue to enjoy cultural and creative activities that celebrate their lives and promote their abilities.

Hearing voices, seeing visions and similar out-of-the-ordinary experiences have long intrigued and mystified humankind. The dominant scientific and medical understandings of these phenomena tend to problematise them. This ground-breaking book builds on the work of the Hearing Voices Movement and of the researchers Marius Romme and Sandra Escher in challenging this perception. The book is a collection of chapters by voice hearers, mental health professionals and researchers describing a myriad of therapeutic and creative approaches and strategies that people find helpful in relating to voices when they find them distressing. It is based on insights, understandings and knowledge derived from the first-hand experience of voice hearers and from mental health practice and research that show that the person’s relationship with the voices and what the voices say are key to understanding and living with them; that voices are not in themselves a problem and can even be helpful; that there is a strong connection between voices and unwanted emotions; that life-long medication is not the inevitable and only treatment and, most importantly perhaps, that voice hearers can live well with their voices (even if it is sometimes hard work). The book is presented in three parts: Part one, ‘Hearing our voices’, includes voice hearers’ perspectives as to what has helped them to recover from breakdown so that they are able to live full lives, including Hearing Voices Groups and peer support. Part two, ‘Emerging social and therapeutic approaches to working with voices’, explores different mainstream non-medical and psychotherapeutic approaches that help voice hearers to make sense of and live well with their voices. Part three, ‘Creative approaches to working with voices’, describes using creative arts, such as dance, drama and poetry, to help voice hearers relate to their voices in positive ways.