Members of CHARM and friends across the Manchester Hearing Voices community are really sad to learn of the death of our great friend Steven.Willett.

Stephen was a loyal and dedicated member of the Manchester Hearing Voices group. He helped establish it about seven years ago. He was a regular participant and would attend our online meetings wherever he was – including from within Psychiatrist hospital wards.
Stephen was sometimes difficult to understand in our meetings because of his speech impediment caused by injuries he had. However this did not prevent him from being an energetic contributor to our meetings, using the chat function when we were unable to fully understand what he was
saying. Steven always brought an eclectic perspective to our meetings. With a combination of his scientific, spiritual and cosmic understandings of the universe and his own life. This was great because it took us outside of our every day conversations into something else – we always valued his
unique perspectives.

Steven was known to many in Greater Manchester mental health networks as a thoughtful and deeply reflective man whose life was shaped by long experience of psychiatric services, including years of compulsory treatment. He spoke and wrote openly about distress, altered states, spirituality, psychiatric care, and the struggle to preserve dignity and meaning within systems that often leave people unheard. His writings revealed a determination to make sense of experiences that psychiatry too often reduces to diagnosis alone. He drew on spirituality, Buddhism, Quakerism, Quantum physics and personal reflection in ways that resonated with many others who have tried to understand experiences commonly described as psychosis or voice-hearing. Steven’s life reflected a wider history in Manchester: a city where survivors, voice-hearers, families, and campaigners have worked for decades to create more humane and rights-based approaches to mental health care. In his own quiet and personal way, Steven contributed to that tradition by insisting that lived experience mattered, that coercion leaves lasting effects, and that people experiencing extreme states should be
treated with humanity and respect.

Those who encountered Steven often remember his sincerity, sensitivity, and seriousness of thought. His reflections on hospital life, spirituality, suffering, and recovery stand as testimony to the inner lives that continue beyond clinical notes and institutional labels. Some of us got to know him better and learnt about his childhood, his background and his extraordinary contributions to the community life of Manchester over many years. During his life he was a medical student, a photographer capturing images of industrial action and community protests.

He was a great reader and philosopher, he was a philanthropist. In hisyounger days he was a climber and member of Red Rope, a socialist climbing club. He was misunderstood. He was joker. But beneath all of that was a compassionate and caring man. He was dedicated to Human rights campaigns, reaching out to prisoners on death row in the United States. He often had idealistic views about how he could change the way people were being treated across the World. It is testament to the courage of Stephen that he always tried to assert his right to be who he was – that was a lifelong struggle. We extend our condolences to all who knew him, including friends, fellow survivors, members of Quaker communities, and others connected through Manchester mental health networks. In terms of his legacy for Manchester and beyond and for the Group that I
am part of, CHARM, he will not be forgotten. Our work on medication; Our work on Hearing Voices; Our work on human rights Our work trying to change the system is framed by the life experiences of people like Stephen and how different it could’ve been for him if there was a different way