Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery

Abstract

There is a clear opportunity for the emergent field of health humanities to move to a whole new level of impact, with contributions from anthropology, narrative and literature to linguistics, music and visual art, as well as the very many arts and humanities-based knowledges and practices that it was not possible to include in this slim manifesto volume. As we have indicated, creative practice is a major activity in societies worldwide, and arts and expressive therapies are well established in physical and mental health services. In terms of the latter, for example, research has already demonstrated the importance of arts for ‘recovery orientated mental health services’ (Spandler et al., 2007), how they provide ways of breaking down social barriers, of expressing and understanding experiences and emotions, and of helping to rebuild identities and communities (Brown and Kandirikirira, 2007; Devlin, 2009; Secker et al., 2007).