Voices: A co-produced psychosis soundworld

PI Title: Dr Viet-Xuan Elen Williams & Dr Natalie Shoham 

Lead member: Queen Mary University of London 

We have co-created an artistic interpretation of voice hearing with a group of people who hear voices and an award-winning composer. This piece of sound art/music (Voices Soundworld) has been designed to help reduce stigma and raise awareness of psychosis symptoms. GPs are generally good at recognising psychosis, but they need people with early psychosis to see them promptly. Yet people do not always recognise psychosis symptoms like hearing voices as being a sign of a condition that can be successfully managed. Raising awareness of symptoms has been shown to reduce the duration of untreated psychosis, which in turn can reduce illness severity, not just in the initial phase but even after 10 years from diagnosis.

We seek to reach young men from Global Majority ethnic groups, in particular young black men who are the most likely group to develop psychosis. To amplify our reach, we will co-create a focused campaign that utilises social media and influencers to directly speak to our target audience. We will work with CoreArts, a not-for-profit social business based in Hackney, East London, which is one of the country’s most deprived areas and with 47% of the population coming from Black and Global Majority. Hackney has a very high prevalence of severe mental illness, and hospital admissions for schizophrenia/psychosis are three times the national average. CoreArts works with the local community to promote positive mental health and wellbeing through creative learning. CoreArts members who have experience of psychosis will co-create with the research team a strategy to disseminate the project findings to young men aged 16-25 from Global Majority ethnicities, especially young black men (the group most likely to experience psychosis) living in East London.

In recognition of psychosis being so highly stigmatised, we will use the Voices Soundworld to reach a wider audience with the aim of reducing stigma in a wider context. The Voices Soundworld will feature at the prestigious Luxembourg Philharmonie festival in November 2025. It will be released to music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify via an established music distributor. Fiona Talkington, BBC radio broadcaster and experienced communicator of medical issues to the public, will provide advice on maximising impact from the Voices Soundworld via established media outlets. This will likely include interviews from the research team and sending press releases to key print and broadcast media, which will include relevant podcasts. This will enable reaching a wider audience and generally help with reducing the stigma surrounding psychosis.

We plan to start our targeted social media campaign for Black and Global Majority young men in November 2025 and finish in December 2025. We recognise that the nature of social media means that the campaign can continue long beyond our active involvement. Our traditional media campaign will start in November 2025 and end in February 2026.

Amount awarded: £2,000