Sunday 29 November 2015

Creative Arts in Counselling and Mental Health - some exciting news, and a big decision


This excellent, and mainly Australian, book recently got published by Sage, which is very exciting. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I co-wrote a chapter in this book with my colleagues psychologist Robert King (who also co-edited the whole book) and social worker and psychotherapist Tom O'Brien. These amazing humans assisted a group of art therapists (including myself) establish an art therapy program at University of Queensland in 2004, in the School of Medicine.

We recently graduated another talented pod of art therapists, who will go on to do fantastic work. So its particularly cool to have this collaborative work in the public domain.

The chapter in question is a systematic review of art therapy outcomes research; its exciting for me, as  I believe it provides the most substantial evidence so far that art therapy is effective.  Which is very important to those of us in the art therapy world, and indeed to anyone who wishes to include creative activities in their therapy practice.

We can now say that art therapy is as effective as other forms of psychotherapy. Of course, it has the added advantage of introducing creativity into the therapeutic space, thereby producing an enriched environment. But we already knew that.

Instagram bee tattoo design by Henrietta Harris

We now have our own bees, who make superb honey. Coincidentally, I have been feeling as busy as one, but without such great outcomes...until I recently made a big decision to leave one of my three jobs, and try to stop spreading myself too thinly (extended honey metaphor, apologies). 

So I am now in the stages of winding down that job, (three weeks to go!) which has taken up way too much time and emotional energy in the past two years, and I'm feeling excited about how next year will look. 


Of course, there is an element of risk in doing this (leaving my job), but I am feeling fairly confident I have made a good decision. Change is always scary, but as my hairdresser told me yesterday, we need change to feel alive (or something like that). But then, she would say that...

Also looking forward to blogging more often again. Its been a long time since I had spare energy for such things.

more later.