Hello, I hope this finds you well, and having had a restful and enjoyable festive season.

We're still on holiday here at the Naked Scientist, so in our place this week we have a special

feature for you made by Chris Chapman and Penny Bailey from the

Woken Trust. It's called Voices in the Dark.

You're listening to an audio story from mosaic science.com.

I have a person.

I have a person inside of me

a person living within my head.

To me it's not a broken brain, it's more of a broken story. There's a broken link between yourself

and the story you should live. Behind an abandoned shop along Brixton Road in South London, a tall man shelters from the rain underneath the

alcove of a two-story edifice.

The building houses the Social Hope and Recovery Project, the Sharp Clinic, run by the South London and Maudsley, NHS Trust, dedicated

to providing mental health services for people in the Lambth area.

Inside, a area.

Inside, a pioneering new therapeutic treatment, avatar therapy, aiming to help voice-hearers manage their distressing voices

is being trialed.

You're worthless, you're a waste of space.

I want you to have a go at talking back to the avatar.

Tell him to leave you alone.

Sitting in front of a computer in the basement, Dr. Tom Ward is a senior clinical psychologist at the clinic,

and is role-playing a scenario as part of the therapy.

Owen, his assistant, is playing the role of the patient and communicates via a computer in an upstairs room. No way of this.

...