I can’t quite believe that it’s now three years since my book Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental Health Practice was first published. Since the spring of 2018 so much has happened in my own life and, of course, in everybody’s lives. I’ve experienced three major life events – retirement, bereavement and grandparenthood – whilst, like everyone else, living through successive lockdowns and months of restrictions on travel, recreation and social contact.
Through these times people have found creativity a solace but also, occasionally, something hard to harness or sustain. It might almost be said our wellbeing has been sacrificed for the sake of our health although, of course, in reality this is a contradiction. In our efforts to avoid contracting and transmitting a physical illness those things that make for physical, psychosocial and spiritual wellbeing have been side-lined. We’ve been denied normal weddings and funerals, trips to the pub and the cinema, companionship, hugs, celebrations. And there is a growing acknowledgment that mental health has been forced to play second fiddle to physical health and that this is surely storing up trouble for us as a society.
When I first hit upon the idea of writing a book about these three elements – creativity, wellbeing, mental health practice – I thought I was being quite original. While all three topics were well-researched in themselves, not many writers or researchers had considered the connections between these three aspects of human life. Even my publishers (and the peer reviewers and series editors) seemed to agree that it was a novel enough idea to merit publication. So, it gives me great satisfaction – though, of course, I can’t take any credit for this trend – to notice a little flurry of international publications in the past six months which deal with some of the same connections.
“Insofar as creativity involves adaptive behaviour that emerges in response to interruptions to previously successful routines and habits (…) 2020 has been the year of creativity par excellence. But the disruptive impact of COVID-19 has also destroyed or damaged many creative social products generated by those old routines and habits, meaning that routines and habits, and not just interruptions or impasses, can also be pathways to creativity (…). The events of 2020 should therefore give us pause to consider the meaning of the term ‘creativity’ and to reflect on the potential role of creativity in cultivating and supporting wellbeing” (Kiernan, Davidson, & Oades, 2020).
I’m honoured to get a name check
in this editorial, alongside others including the great Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
in the discussion about how creativity research has been brought into domains
such as business, education and manufacturing and how, in turn, this has helped
“to position creativity as an increasingly important concept in the burgeoning
field of wellbeing research” (Kiernan, Davidson, & Oades, 2020).
Next, in the January issue of Frontiers
in Psychology, Elizabeth Wilson (of the Creative Arts and Music Therapy
Research Unit at the University of Melbourne) writes about using art therapy
with creative arts students (Wilson, 2021). Her research study explores ways of meeting the
mental health and wellbeing needs of students through a brief creative arts
therapies approach. She found that single session art therapy was able to
afford students a novel means to externalise problems, leading them to form a
less internalised view of the self. One of Wilson’s research themes is single
session art therapy as a ‘novel experience’, and she also cites my book – and
the work of Steenbarger (2006) – on the subject of novelty:
“Novelty is described in the literature on creative thinking as encompassing any idea, process or product deemed by a perceiver as offering a feeling of ‘departure from the familiar’ (Gillam, 2018). Within the field of brief psychotherapy, novelty is considered to help ‘disorient clients in positive ways’ through the therapist’s strategic use of techniques that help stimulate a sense of play, humour and imagination in the therapy space (Steenbarger, 2006).”
Finally, also in January, a group
of Norwegian researchers published a paper in Medicine Health Care and
Philosophy exploring the use of creative writing among young adults in
treatment for psychosis (Synnes, Romm and Bondevik, 2021). Again, the
authors cite my book, along with the contemporary work of Costa and Abreu (2018):
“Although expressive writing is a clearly defined method that has been researched extensively, creative writing is a much less defined practice, covering various forms of literary writing such as poetry, fiction and storytelling, both in groups and on an individual basis (Costa and Abreu 2018; Gillam 2018). Costa and Abreu (2018) call for greater clarity with a consistent conceptualisation for the application of creative writing in clinical settings; they conclude that at the moment, there are no ‘established ways of assessing qualitatively or quantitatively the therapeutic benefits of creative writing’ (2018, p. 83).”
Although they acknowledge that
research on creative writing in mental illness and psychosis is still in its
infancy, Synnes, Romm and Bondevik conclude that creative writing groups
can be valuable for young adults who have experienced psychosis adding that their
findings correspond with previous research highlighting creative writing as
part of a recovery process (Synnes, Romm and Bondevik, 2021).
So, three years post-publication,
I’m delighted that other researchers continue to explore the links between
creativity and wellbeing as well as the links between creativity and mental
health practice, whether this involves art therapy with creative arts students
or creative writing with young people with psychosis. And, of course, this time
of pandemic and social isolation – and its aftermath – will continue to yield
new insights into the value of creativity and how best to sustain our wellbeing.
References
Costa, A.C. and Abreu, M.V. (2018.) Expressive and creative
writing in the therapeutic context: from the different concepts to the
development of writing therapy programs. Psychologica 61 (1):
69–86.
Gillam, T. (2018). Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental
Health Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kiernan, F., Davidson, J. W., & Oades, L. G. (2020).
Researching creativity and wellbeing: Interdisciplinary perspectives. International
Journal of Wellbeing, 10(5), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i5.1523
Steenbarger, B. (2006). “The importance of novelty in
psychotherapy,” in Clinical Strategies for Becoming a Master Psychotherapist,
eds W. O’Donohue, N. A. Cummings, and J. L. Cummings (Cambridge, MA: Academic
Press), 277–290. doi: 10.1016/B978-012088416-2/50017-7
Synnes, O., Romm, K.L. and Bondevik, H. (2021). The
poetics of vulnerability: creative writing among young adults in treatment for
psychosis in light of Ricoeur’s and Kristeva’s philosophy of language and
subjectivity. Jan 2021 · Medicine Health Care and Philosophy.
Wilson, E. (2021). Novel Solutions to Student Problems: A
Phenomenological Exploration of a Single Session Approach to Art Therapy with
Creative Arts University Students. Frontiers in Psychology. 18 January
2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.600214
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