The Bay Area Hearing Voices Network has been supporting those who hear voices and experience other extraordinary sensory perception experiences since 2014.

Our history

The Hearing Voices Movement originated in the 1980’s in the Netherlands and has been inspiring voice hearers, peer workers, and allies in the UK and other parts of Europe ever since.  Over the past two decades, local hearing voices groups have developed around the world, creating a Hearing Voices Network (HVN). InterVoice, based in the United Kingdom, currently serves as the international organizing network of the hearing voices movement. Hearing Voices Network USA was founded in 2010.

The HVN approach strongly emphasizes the value of exploring the personal and cultural meaning of voices and related experiences, does not promote any one interpretation of voices, and emphasizes the importance of self-determination.

HVN endeavors to bring together voice hearers, family members, and clinicians, and sustains an international research advisory board. In many parts of the world, mental health centers and outpatient clinics regularly refer clients to HVN groups and collaborate with voice hearers and service users in order to promote shared goals of recovery, acceptance, and community integration.

Who we are

We are a mutual-aid community for self-exploration of unusual lived experiences; it is not medical treatment or therapy. Our meetings are non-clinical social groups, where we can share our experiences openly and without judgement. Groups are not “treatment” or “psychoeducation”.

Our story

The Bay Area Hearing Voices Network was launched in 2014, building on the past work of organizers in the greater San Francisco area. Current members of the BAHVN board include  voice hearers, family members, advocates, researchers, and clinicians.

Our mission

The Bay Area Hearing Voices Network seeks to expand public awareness, provide community support, and refuge for those who hear voices, see visions, and experience other forms of extraordinary experiences. BAHVN also provides support and refuge for family members and friends.

Board of directors

  • Ed Herzog

    President

    Ed Herzog was one of the co-founders of the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network in 2014 and currently co-facilitates two Family and Friends HVN groups.  He lives in Berkeley and has been a documentary filmmaker and labor organizer for 30 years, working primarily with labor unions.   He got involved in the hearing voices movement when his son told him around ten years ago that he heard voices.  Though he does not hear voices himself, he experienced trauma as a young boy and extreme visual and auditory experiences.  He is on the BAHVN board of directors, the NAMI East Bay Board of Directors, and the HVN-USA board of directors.

  • Kenneth Kozi Arrington

    Vice President

    Kenneth Kozi Arrington is the Programs Outreach Coordinator for Peers Envisioning and Engaging in Recovery Services, aka PEERS, in Oakland, CA. In his role, Kozi reaches out to various Alameda & San Francisco County communities, organizations, agencies and learning institutions that serve and/or educate and provide care for people with mental health challenges. On the job, he plays a lead role as an Advanced Level Facilitator of the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) Groups. Other curriculums Kozi co-facilitates are, Buried in Treasure; a support group for folks that have excessive collecting or hoarding issues. A voice hearer himself, Special Messages which is a counterpart of HVN is another group Kozi co-facilitates on an ongoing basis. Mr. Arrington is the co-founder and lead chairperson of the Alameda County, Pool of Consumer Champions, (POCC), Sexuality & Gender Alliance Committee, (SAGA). SAGA is a peer support group and committee for LGBTQI2S Gender Non-Conforming individuals.

  • Ed Chiera

    Treasurer

    Ed Chiera is a family member, community organizer and advocate for the Hearing Voices Movement. He lives in western Marin County. Now retired, Ed worked for over 20 years as a consultant to labor leaders nationally, creating joint labor‐management training programs to upskill union members to meet workforce changes, most notably in health care. Presently, as a volunteer board member, he is guiding BAHVN to gain state and federal recognition as a public benefit corporation, eligible to receive charitable donations and grants.

  • David Hallsted

    Secretary

    I am a retired continuous facilitator. I trained as a hearing voice facilitator and run the Monday adult support group.I am currently the Secretary of the BAHVN. I also run a voice science meeting on Sunday at 6 PM. I also run a Game night on Friday at 5 PM. My current CV is here. 

  • Cindy Hadge

    Board Member

    Cindy Hadge is an internationally recognized educator providing training and consultations to mental health providers worldwide who are looking for innovative ways to approach voice-hearing, extreme states, and trauma. She draws from her own experience of childhood trauma, experiences in the traditional mental health system, and navigating her own voices, visions, and unusual beliefs. She is passionate about developing and facilitating healing spaces for those going through these kinds of experiences and their families. Cindy supported the development of Hearing Voices Network USA Family and Friends Groups and has been an HVN USA trainer since 2012. Cindy is the Director of Collaborative Projects for the Wildflower Alliance and an Intentional Peer Support trainer.

  • Valerie Chronis Bickett

    Board Member

    Valerie Chronis Bickett is both married to and the mother of a person with lived experience.  She started this journey a fan of the medical model and is now thrilled to see it going down.  Seven years ago, along with Deborah Jordan, she helped found the Holistic Mental Health Network of Greater Cincinnati in order to have a place to talk about true mental health.  A life-long writer and teacher of writing, she is interested in imagining
    what some of her ancestors would say if they had left word.

  • Tim Dreby

    Board Member

    Tim Dreby is an award-winning author and licensed psychotherapist who works on an urban outpatient psychiatric unit. Tim’s first publication was in 2015, entitled, Fighting for Freedom in America: Memoir of a “Schizophrenia” and Mainstream Cultural Delusions. It chronicles his mid career plight taking on a section 8 management company, police, and black market forces that intermingled to run things. The outcome has been a unique perspective on mental health informed by both sides of the broken tiled corridor. Tim became a social worker in 1993 and worked his way through. Over the past ten years, he developed an extensive training for providers to help them work with people who experience “psychosis” across diagnostic divides.

  • Bret Fimiani

    Board Member

    Bret Fimiani is a psychologist and psychoanalyst and he specializes in working with people who experience voice hearing and unusual and distressing beliefs.  He has a clinical practice based in Oakland, California and his recent book titled "Psychosis and Extreme States: An Ethic for Treatment" (Palgrave 2021) offers a way to integrate the principles of the Hearing Voices Network with clinical practice.   

  • Adela C.Y. Lee Hsu

    Board Member

Advisors

Manton Hurd

Manton is a Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner working in the public mental health system. He has prior experience working with underserved populations in mental health as an advocate, counselor and nurse. Manton is particularly interested in applying innovative theoretical approaches to improve outcomes for individuals with severe and persistent emotional and mental distress.

Kyle Foster

I found the Hearing Voices Network at the start of the COVID 19 pandemic. It is my life’s goal to continue to seek and aid the most vulnerable. Through stoicism and determination, I have made sense of my own afflictions. With work a meaningful life can be put together, I would love to help you do the same.

Kailin Wang

Kailin is an Artist & Graphic Designer who contributes Art/Creative Direction for Bay Area Hearing Voices Network. She is also a voice hearer who began her hearing voices journey in 2016. Based in Oakland, CA, she joined the BAHVN team in 2022 and is passionate about connecting those in need with the info, support, and community that they are seeking.

Julia Green

Julia Green is the mother of a voice hearer and has been an active member of the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network family room since 2021. She works in international development, which has informed her human rights-based approach to extreme states. Julia lives in New York City and is grateful that she can connect with BAHVN on line even though it means staying up late.

livedexperienceeditorial.com

Memorial

Heather Riemer

Heather Riemer was an honored board member and Vice President of BAHVN. Originally from Hawaii, Heather resided in Berkeley, California. She loved the Bay Area and planned to continue living here. Heather had many different types of extraordinary experiences, which made her sensitive to other people’s struggles, and was a long-time advocate of mental health services. In addition to facilitating BAHVN meetings, she worked full-time at the PEERS Envisioning Recovery Project in Oakland, California. Heather was the mother of three adult children and the grandmother of an adorable grandson, and also shared her life with two sweet kitties. She envisioned a world where people just don’t suffer so much.