Claire Bien, MEd
Research associate and clinical collaborator at Yale University:
Was diagnosed with schizophreniform disorder and manic depression, was paranoid and suicidal. Took medications short-term, “when absolutely necessary” (Hearing Voices, Living Fully, pp. 260-261). She originally accepted her diagnoses (as stated in her book Hearing Voices, Living Fully, published in 2016), but then moved away from using medical terms. Currently, she “holds trauma-based understandings of the vulnerabilities that led to her three extended departures from consensus reality.” She has achieved “continuing, unmedicated recovery” and has been off medication since the early 1990s (Hearing Voices, Living Fully, pp. 197–200, 247). In 1990, she considered suicide because she was paranoid when she did not take medications, and suffered terrible side effects when she did. Not being able to live like that, she almost jumped off a balcony, but then thought of her son who needed a mother.
This was her turning point, after which she tapered off her medications and gradually got better. In her own words, “I believe it was my decision … to take responsibility for myself as well for my young son that changed everything” (Hearing Voices, Living Fully, p. 198). Currently, she is a research associate at the Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health, a clinical collaborator at the Belief, Learning, & Memory Lab at the Yale School of Medicine, and a member of the board of directors of the Hearing Voices Network-USA. She seeks “to help de-pathologize the voice-hearing experience and increase understanding that it is the social conditions of our lives, and the unresolved feelings we have when relationships go awry, that most profoundly affect people’s ability to live fully.”
Book: Hearing Voices, Living Fully (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016) https://www.amazon.com/Hearing-Voices-Living-Fully-Head/dp/1785927183
Peer-reviewed research publications: https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/claire-bien/