Читать книгу The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Healthcare Practitioners - Группа авторов - Страница 21

One student who was well versed in visual art, had never before tried creative writing. After the creative writing session on the course, she began to use creative writing to process some of what she was going through and found it to be surprisingly powerful and helpful. She created an image to capture this, of an artist, face covered, painting her portrait. The Three Dimensional (3D ) image of her face emerges from the page:

My painting is a self‐portrait of me, writing. My hair is covering my face, this is to illustrate that when I initially pick up the pen, I am hiding from something; I am not in tune with myself. From the page I am writing on emerges my reflection; the idea that my identity is revealed to me as I write [27].

This is a helpful illustration of how expression through the arts can facilitate or extend the dialogue we have with ourselves [36]. Other students also describe this experience:

The process [of writing a poem] requires you to be very honest and it stirred up many emotions that have remained dormant…It required me to be more honest with myself … . [8].

…Poetic or artistic expression is a means by which innermost thoughts and feelings are given form so that they can be viewed and interpreted by their creators and by others. It has become evident how important it is to express these thoughts – to learn more about ourselves and to feel more at one in our own skin [8].

It seems that through the creative process not only is vulnerable reflection with others possible, but a more vulnerable encounter with the self, and even the shadow sides of our experiencing which we might ordinarily seek to avoid [37]. Silence as well as creative expression may both be important facilitatory features in this work.

I found it helpful writing down what exactly I was finding difficult. It gave the challenges less power… [32].

The periods of silence throughout the week are when I think I was able to sort out a lot of feelings and things I was experiencing in my personal life [32].

Here one of the students makes the case for turning towards rather than away from what is difficult, the importance of which has also been described in creative enquiry work with junior doctors [38]. It is hard to argue against the importance of good eating, sleeping, exercising but perhaps there is also value in extending student engagement with their lived experiences and challenges through the arts or other kinds of group work.

In our lectures of wellbeing, we were often told that we need to make sure that we spend time with friends and pursue hobbies and interests outside of medicine. We were told to take regular breaks and to exercise. Though these suggestions are helpful, during this SSC I realised that all the wellbeing strategies we are taught teach us to allow Medicine to consume our whole lives, and to cope we should take intermittent short breaks to distract ourselves from the vacuum. I realised that true wellbeing, is facing what we are struggling with and not avoiding it, and finding the positives and solutions through that process [32].

This deeply personal work of expression and exploration, using metaphor and symbol to extend reflection and understanding can be experienced as transformative [8].

To describe the Creative Arts Student Selected Components in two words would be: life changing… [32].

…I believe that I learnt more about myself in the past two weeks than I have in my twenty‐one years. I have been able to open up, when I have always kept my emotions and thoughts to myself… [32].