MSc / PG Dip in Creative Arts and Mental Health

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About the course

This innovative and unique MSc in Creative Arts and Mental Health is jointly run by the Centre for Psychiatry and the Department of Drama and offers an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and research, with a particular emphasis on theatre and performance in the creative arts. It covers the history, theory, and practice of performance in relation to all aspects of mental health promotion and the prevention and treatment of mental illness.

The programme is directed at a combination of education professionals, artists, scholars, and mental health practitioners. It offers students the opportunity to learn in detail, from both arts and science perspectives, about how the creative arts can be used to think critically about and engage the public with concepts and experiences of mental health and the mental health system. The course necessarily reflects a critical analysis of the scientific method(s) of mental health research and practice and explores the use of arts-based research, evaluation and dissemination methods.

The primary aims of this course are to develop students’ ability to think critically about the relationship between the arts and mental health and mental health care practices in a national and international context. Specifics aims are to develop and enhance:

  • how mental health professionals, arts practitioners and others interested in mental health and wellbeing work together in both clinical and non-clinical environments;
  • the ways in which mental health experiences are represented in the arts and in popular culture, and how arts-based practice can help to expand and nuance both clinical and popular understandings of patient and clinician experiences in the mental health system;
  • perceptions and assumptions about the ways arts-based practices can support recovery;
  • critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current practice in arts/mental health collaborations, with an eye to developing best practices for collaboration among arts workers, clinicians, mental health researchers, and - crucially - people with lived experience of mental health issues.

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