Creativity And Social Support In Mental Health

This book weaves together service users' lived experiences of mental health recovery and ideas about how creative activities such as art, music, and creative reading and writing can promote it, particularly within social and community settings.

This book weaves together service users' lived experiences of mental health recovery and ideas about how creative activities such as art, music, and creative reading and writing can promote it, particularly within social and community settings.

Contemporary practices in mental health (and social care) are increasingly characterized by approaches that overly simplify social, political, and psychological concerns. The persistence and ubiquity of models designated to tackle diagnoses through focused technologies serve to minimize the human encounter in all its relational and systemic complexity. Practice becomes a technological activity instead of one concerned with the unique creative potential in meeting with others in therapy. With the growth of privatized mental health services, many practitioners are facing a plethora of "Must Do's" that focus on measurable outcomes, with clear goals and cost effective treatments. Yet, in practice, such apparent clarity of purpose often leads to bureaucratic clutter and risk aversion instead of clearing the decks for creativity. The focus of this book is how the practitioner or therapist can navigate around current practices in order to avoid falling into the rapids of quick fix solutions, whilst staying afloat to find realistic outcomes to human dilemmas that are brought to us.

This book re-examines the common view that a high level of individual creativity often correlates with a heightened risk of mental illness.

Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration.

This book argues that some aspects of mental health practice have become mechanical, joyless and uninspiring, leading to a loss of creativity and wellbeing. A high level of wellbeing is essential to mental health and contemporary mental health care – and creativity is at the heart of this. A greater awareness of everyday creativity, the arts and creative approaches to mental health practice, learning and leadership can help us reinvent and reinvigorate mental health care. This, combined with a clearer understanding of the complex concept of wellbeing, can enable practitioners to adopt fresh perspectives and roles that can enrich their work. Creativity and wellbeing are fundamental to reducing occupational stress and promoting professional satisfaction. Introducing a new model of creative mental health care combined with recommendations for wellbeing, Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental Health Practice is a practical, evidence-based book for students, practitioners and researchers in mental health nursing and related disciplines.

'This book is really a must-have for therapists and others in the creative arts, so that you can see how the workings of the human mind can be displayed through the arts. Even with serious illness, the mind can talk. And that is the point of the book'. - Metapsychology Online Book Reviews 'The references cited at the end of each chapter are instructive and useful with some contributors drawing on memoirs and creative work and others on textbooks and papers. As Fiona points out in her introduction, those with an interest in the field - which includes clinicians, patients, arts managers, psychotherapists, writers, occupational therapists, teachers - I am sure you can add to the list - inevitably speak different languages, reflecting their different priorities. I agree with her argument that this contributes to a healthy diversity of practice that may offer "something for everyone" and we should resist narrow definitions. The challenge for those of us in the field is to locate ourselves on this strange and exciting map and to chart our own experiences in whatever languages are appropriate. Conferences, such as Strange Baggage and the increasingly popular Lapidus annual event provide an excellent opportunity to journey beyond our usual borders to exchange travellers' tales with our colleagues'. - Lapidus 'An incisive collection of essays and case studies, where theory is applied to practical goals: working out methods for how to help and understand those with problems threatening their sanity or stability. Creative expression can contribute to personal and community health.' - Writing in Education 'Creative Writing in Health and Social Care is full of experience of working with patients with dementia, hospital, hospice and occupational therapy patients, and those in primary care. This is innovative work - deeply helpful to the patients, illuminatively described.' - The British Journal of General Practice This unique and comprehensive 'map' of the topic of creative writing in health and social care brings together contributions from health and social care professionals and provides the information needed to teach, counsel and write. Principally exploring poetry and story writing and telling, case studies range from work with pre-literate children in post-war Macedonia to people with dementia in Britain. Complementing these insights, theory-based contributions provide context, comparing different arts therapies using psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories of art and ideas, assessing the value of creative writing in a health care setting, examining methods of training therapists and looking at the aims of creative writing in terms of self development. This holistic approach ensures that Creative Writing in Health and Social Care is an essential guide for health care professionals and others seeking to use creative writing in therapeutic settings.