Creative writing groups as a new group-based hybrid between an art workshop and a group therapeutic intervention for people suffering from mental illness.

Abstract

Art has always had its place in psychiatry as both occupation, and therapeutic or diagnostic means. Internationally, art-based interventions are recognised
and implemented in psychiatry, but in Denmark service users have very limited access to such. A new group-based format integrating psychodynamic
and phenomenological thinking and is centered around creative writing led by fiction authors in collaboration with mental health care co-therapists,
takes an eclectic approach to recovery focused on reflective functioning, identity, connectedness, empowerment and anti-stigma. Texts produced in
the group work as transitional phenomena, and the writing group creates a holding-containing environment, where factors like resonance and creativity
become important. This is the background for the development of a new manualized group-intervention with creative writing that has been offered as
adjuvant to the psychiatric treatment at the mental health care centers in the Copenhagen region.