Abstract
This chapter draws on the author’s own experience of writing and of facilitating a creative writing group for service users. It provides an overview of therapeutic uses of creative writing, including Pennebaker’s work on expressive writing. It reviews evidence for the use of literature, creative writing and poetry in mental health care, exploring bibliotherapy, therapeutic writing and poetry therapy as well as narrative biography. Creative writing is examined as a tool for promoting both the recovery of service users and the professional development of mental health practitioners, including a discussion of the value of storytelling in mental health nursing. The chapter concludes by considering the role of journaling and blogging and the overlapping areas of therapeutic writing, literary writing, autobiography and writing for publication.
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Notes
- 1.
“Écrire, c’est une façon de parler sans être interrompu.” (Jules Renard , 1895.)
- 2.
I have created a blog – to be found at https://tonygillam.blogspot.co.uk/ – to publish material supplementary to this book and which, I hope, will offer an ongoing forum for those interested in creativity, wellbeing and mental health practice.
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Gillam, T. (2018). Creative Writing, Literature, Storytelling and Mental Health Practice. In: Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental Health Practice. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74884-9_7
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