By John Talliday-
Mental Health is a strange, broad and complex topic. When someone tells you they are hearing voices as clear as another human being speaking to you, you have a crazy person before you.
Yet, for those who insist they have been victims of hearing a tormenting external voice, they make our skin crawl. Londoner, Aaron Davidson contacted the eye of media.com, after being asked by his cousin to share his story with us. His cousin , Sharon Matthews, told the eye of media.com ” I thought this was an important thing for people to be aware of.
Sometimes when we deal with people who we find odd or irritable, it does not cross our minds that they may be suffering from mental health problems, she said.
Unless Aaron tells somebody his story, they will never know what he was going through. Even at the time, he could hold coherent conversations, but then would sometimes be ‘offish’ in his attitude or withdrawn at other times. It is important for people to be aware that there are a number of people suffering with mental health, who may not always show this”.
Speaking with Davidson reveals weird accounts of voices he has heard over a period of years. Just a sample from his list of bizarre recollections, is disturbing enough. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, he looks and sounds pensive as he tells his story. I ask:
. ”You mean you have heard voices talking to you audibly”? ” Yes, the 28 year old from White chapel says he head voices for over a decade years, sometimes coming in seasons.
”There have been times when they disappear for a while, and then the voices come back. Medication did not control it at the time.
The most recent experience lead him to be put in a mental institute for 6 months. Davidson explained:
”The voices were telling me to kill myself, it will tell me to go to a cliff and jump over the cliff. I then feel this overwhelming urge to find a cliff and jump over it, but i fight it constantly. Eventually, it drove me mad! I was losing my mind, and that really scared me because it never crossed my mind before that it was possible for me to lose my mind. It was really scary”.
Davidson told the eye of media.com that he is planning to move out of london, to a destination he does not wish to publicize. ”I’m not telling any of my pals in london where I am off to, because i want to lie low. I want to treat my mental health completely, and get on with life. I am currently on medication, and it has shut the voices up at the moment. I hear it has to do with some chemical balance in the brain”.
HEARING VOICES IS DOCUMENTED
Hearing voices has been documented for centuries, but occurs only to a minority of individuals. There have been serial killers who have claimed to hear voices telling them to commit the atrocity of murder, as a service for God. The Yorkshire ripper is one of such vile examples of a man who claimed to be driven by an unknown voice. Such men have no bone of compassion in them, but are satanic in nature, whatever the root cause of their strange impulses and experiences.
Despite documented claims of hearing voices, the phenomenon remains as alien to the human mind as the idea that some pigs do fly. So incomprehensible are the claims, that if true, it opens up all kinds of wider questions about human beings.
The eye of media.com recently published claims that there were man people suffering from mental health, who are allowed back into society, and who join gangs and use gang culture as their platform to execute their mental illness is committing serious crimes, including murder. Many of these social misfits have a violent streak in them, which combines in lethal fashion with their mental illness. All they do is manage to put on a credible front during their assessment, that they have recuperated, when this might not be the case.
Victims of mental illness who seek treatment and remove themselves from bad crowds, can eventually beat their condition, especially if they stay on their medication. Londoner Davidson is slowly beating the condition, but still finds himself battling even the tormenting memories of the experience. ”Sometimes it is hard even trying not to think about it, because it always finds a way to visit my memory.