In 2013, a clinical psychologist named Eleanor Longden walked onto the TED Global stage in Edinburgh and described, in calm and precise English, the years of her life she had spent hearing voices. The talk, titled "The voices in my head," has been viewed millions of times. It became, almost by accident, one of the most widely shared accounts of psychosis ever delivered to a general audience.
Eleanor Longden survived a severe schizophrenia diagnosis, recovered without becoming voice-free, and now works as a clinical psychologist and a leader in the international Hearing Voices movement.
The first voice
Longden has described how, as a first-year university student in England, she began hearing a single calm voice that narrated her actions in the third person. ("She is opening the door. She is leaving the room.") It was not frightening at first; it felt, she has said, like a kind of company. When she mentioned it to a friend, the friend reacted with alarm. The friend told a doctor. The doctor referred her to a psychiatrist. Within a short time she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, prescribed antipsychotics, and admitted to a psychiatric ward.
The reaction of the system, in her telling, was the moment things began to spiral. As she came to believe there was something profoundly wrong with her, the original benign voice was joined by others — angrier, more critical, sometimes commanding. She has described this as the voices reflecting back to her the fear she now had about herself.
Years inside the system
For most of her twenties Longden cycled through psychiatric admissions, multiple antipsychotics, and a deepening sense of hopelessness. At one point she was told she would be better off with cancer than with schizophrenia, because cancer was easier to cure. She lost years of education, career, and relationships.
What shifted things, in her account, was meeting people who took the content of her voices seriously rather than treating them as meaningless symptoms to be silenced. She encountered the work of the Dutch psychiatrist Marius Romme and the social scientist Sandra Escher, whose research with hundreds of voice-hearers had shown that many people heard voices for years without distress, often in ways linked to traumatic experiences. Romme and Escher founded what became the international Intervoice / Hearing Voices Network.
The Hearing Voices approach
The Hearing Voices movement, which has chapters in dozens of countries, holds several positions that differ from mainstream psychiatry without rejecting it:
- Voice-hearing is a relatively common human experience, not always pathological.
- The content of voices often relates meaningfully to a person's life history, including trauma.
- Recovery does not necessarily mean becoming voice-free. It can mean learning to live with voices peacefully.
- Peer-led groups — people who hear voices supporting each other — are a core part of the work.
For Longden, this framework allowed her to begin negotiating with her voices rather than fighting them. Over years, with therapy, supportive relationships, and a deliberate engagement with her voices' meanings, she rebuilt a life. She returned to university, completed a psychology degree, and went on to a doctorate. She now works at the Psychosis Research Unit at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and at the University of Liverpool.
What the research says
The Hearing Voices framework is not a fringe view. Large epidemiological studies, including work by John McGrath and colleagues for the WHO World Mental Health Surveys, have found that 5–8% of the general population reports having heard voices at some point, with most never developing a psychotic disorder. A 2014 review in the British Journal of Psychiatry concluded that trauma, particularly childhood trauma, is a robust risk factor for later voice-hearing in clinical populations.
Mainstream guidance is increasingly compatible with this view. NICE's schizophrenia guidance in the UK recommends CBT for psychosis (CBTp) and family intervention alongside medication, and CBTp explicitly works with the meaning and content of voices. See our guides to CBTp for voices and avatar therapy.
What she has not said
Longden has been careful, in talks and writing, not to argue that medication is wrong, that schizophrenia diagnoses are meaningless, or that her path will work for everyone. She has said openly that medication helped her at certain points, and that talking with voices is not a substitute for clinical care. The position is more modest: that the dominant narrative of psychosis as something purely biological, to be suppressed and waited out, missed the meaning of her experience and prolonged her suffering.
Why the talk matters
Longden's TED talk works partly because of what she sounds like. She is articulate, funny, and unmistakably "well" by any everyday measure. For listeners whose only prior images of schizophrenia came from films or news stories, the talk dismantles a stereotype: a person who has been deeply ill, who still hears voices, and who is also a research scientist explaining her own brain. Her 2013 memoir, Learning From the Voices in My Head, expands the same material.
For people hearing voices now
If you or someone you love hears voices, several practical resources exist:
- The English Hearing Voices Network and the US Hearing Voices Network list local peer groups.
- Many community mental health centres now offer CBT for psychosis alongside medication.
- Tools like Frida and journaling can help track the patterns and triggers of voices over time.
Most importantly: hearing voices is not, by itself, a verdict on a life. Longden's story — and the thousands of less-public stories behind hers — is a reminder of what is actually possible.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified mental health professional. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, or your local emergency number.