Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Auditory Verbal Hallucinations - What Should it be Doing and How Will We Know When that's Happened?

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One of the core feature of psychosis is AVH, otherwise known as voice hearing experiences. AVH can best be described as the experience of hearing voices in the absence a stimulus (that is a speaker) and have often been linked to psychosis. The experiences associated with psychosis can be distressing for an individual, leading to significant impairments in functioning. These features can also have an economic burden on the society as a result of increased unemployment and hospital costs. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)recommends CBT in the UK for the treatment of psychosis. Despite evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of CBT in treating positive symptoms (e.g. hallucinations) in psychosis, there is no agreement in terms of how to best measure outcomes of CBT for AVH. Previous research studies, have used measures assessing symptom severity to examine outcomes of CBT. These measures however do not truly reflect the emotional processes CBT theoretically targets. This emphasises the need for a consensus on how best to measure outcomes of CBT. Through qualitative research, we can identify service users' and clinicians' views on outcome measures of CBT for AVH, helping us understand what exactly we should be measuring. This research project can potentially contribute to the existing literature by filling in the gaps.