Creative writing as a means to recover from early psychosis– Experiences from a group intervention

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In this paper, we explore the subjective experiences of a group intervention in creative writing (CW) for young adults being treated for psychosis. METHOD: A qualitative and exploratory design was applied. Five out of eight patients who were offered a course in CW with two-hour weekly sessions for 12 weeks took part in this study. The five participants who followed through were interviewed after project termination. Systematic text condensation was applied to the transcribed interviews. RESULTS: The analysis revealed three overarching themes: a) the group was valued as a creative community, b) there was safety in the structured yet flexible framing of the course, c) the participants experienced creative freedom that enabled a feeling of mastery. CONCLUSION: CW was well conceived. The feelings of connectedness and mastery were prominent. The participants experienced growth on several levels. Our findings support previous work on arts therapy as a means to recovery.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 12 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.