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By Alan Mozes THURSDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) — In tiny theater spaces across the United States, people fighting psychiatric illness are learning that acting can be a powerful form of therapy, while the shows they put on help educate audiences through deeply personal accounts of mental health issues. “Theater arts can really give patients a very valuable additional opportunity to piece their lives back together,” said David A. Faigin, department of psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. He believes the approach works by “focusing on the alike things that standard interventions focus on: community reintegration as well as social reintegration.” Faigin, along with Bowling Green professor of clinical psychology Catherine Stein, co-authored a review of theater as mental health therapy in a recent issue of of Psychiatric Services. More as well as more, mental health professionals are viewing the arts — visual arts, dance, writing — as key tools in patients’ recovery, as well as theater is no exception. Faigin has tracked the efficacy of the technique through the Stars of Light group, a community theater linked to the Janet Wattles Center, a mental health agency serving adults in the Rockford, Sick. area. Stars of Light has had a 15-year partnership with the Wattles Center, putting on productions using amateur actors diagnosed with a expansive range of mental health problems. Faigin described the effort as “an exciting exemplar of a grass-roots, community-based theater setting devoted to involving as well as helping people with psychiatric disabilities.” He estimates there are about 20 similar groups scattered across the country in places similar Chicago, Memphis as well as Connecticut. In these programs, artistic directors work with mental health staff to help bring structure to an environment where patients are without charge to generate the artistic content essential to stage theatrical productions. That means everything from script development (often involving autobiographical content) to final performances at churches as well as community centers. These kinds of theaters are not large, typically involving between six as well as 12 volunteer actors. Sometimes they are closely connected as well as managed by a psychiatric facility, as well as sometimes they are entirely independent. The idea of meshing therapy with the dramatic arts isn’t recent. As Faigin pointed out, psychotherapy has extended employed role-playing techniques to help patients tackle done traumas, depression or personality disorders, as well as to foster awareness as well as self-esteem. “Research has shown that chronic mental illness is so incredibly disruptive of so many aspects on one’s life — family dynamics, relationships, employment — that there’s sort of a destroyed self there in terms of meaning as well as purpose,” Faigin noted. But for many patients, performance “sparks a real process of identity development by being forced to get up on stage as well as be themselves — quite literally — [and] by sharing their own personal stories in recovery.”
At the alike time, acting by its very nature can as well as give the patient “a break from everyday life, by being somebody else for a half-hour,” Faigin said. “They possess a creative voice as well as express themselves as someone who has something to say,” he explained. “It’s a very in-your-face opportunity that forces the patients to ‘own it,’ because they’re accountable when they’re up on stage in a live performance in ways that they are not in the privacy of their home.” Other experts agreed that theater can play a role in mental health care. “Mostly my experience has been with patients who possess found it very useful to enroll in acting courses,” said Marvin Aronson, a intimate practitioner in individual, group, as well as couples therapy, as well as former director of the group therapy department at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York City. “It’s not putting on a play or a long-term consuming involvement, but the principle is probably not so dissimilar. The setting gives them a license to learn how people spontaneously express feelings, as well as be exposed to people who are not inhibited.” People who often benefit most from the approach are those who possess had done experiences that possess taught them to close down their emotional responses, he added. “Acting gives them an excuse, in essence, to learn how to express themselves,” Aronson said. Robin F. Goodman, a clinical psychologist, art therapist as well as done president of the American Art Therapy Association, agreed. “Lots of times there are experiences that possess happened to you that are housed in non-verbal ways, as well as the arts are a way to access some of this stuff in terms of a feeling, an emotion, a movement, a song,” she noted. “The experience of theater can be a terrific way to get out some of these things.” As well as it’s not only the acting that’s substantial. Mounting any good of theatrical production involves a extended timeline as well as teamwork from start to finish. “That’s a pleasant challenge for patients, to possess them accept a level of responsibility to as well as from themselves as well as their peers,” Faigin said. “They get support as well as they give it. So at an emotional level there’s a sense of feeling protected in a group, as well as part of a group, as well as feeling that people understand them.” Audiences can benefit, too, often getting an inside look into the world of those with mental illness. By letting people with bipolar disorder as well as other conditions step out of the shadows, the plays help overturn the stigma extended attached to such ills. “When these patients publicly share their own stories as well as their own voices they inevitably raise awareness about mental health issues, so it as well as offers a very substantial community health benefit,” Faigin explained. He said he’s often seen theater help move patients to a best place, no matter what their diagnosis. “It gives them a real sense of purpose, a real creative spirit as well as a real creative voice. It can be a very powerful thing.”
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