Lost Poetry: Psychiatry and Creativity
poetry
William Blake: Biography offers glimpse into artist and poet’s visionary mind
“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.”William Blake Paul Glynn, writing for the BBC says: “One day in 1801, when William Blake was living on the Sussex coast, he went on a long country walk when he got into…
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Re-Lit
Literature and Mental Health: Reading for Wellbeing
This free, online course is offered by FutureLearn (owned by the Open University), who say: “Find out how poems, plays and novels can help us understand and cope with deep emotional strain. The great 18th century writer Dr Samuel Johnson, who suffered from…
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Mental Health, Psychiatry and the Arts: A Teaching Handbook
This teaching handbook has been edited by Victoria Tischler. The publishers say: “This comprehensive book explores how visual art, cinema, music, poetry, literature and drama can inform the teaching and practice of psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Edited and written by…
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Explaining My Depression to My Mother
Sabrina Benaim’s poem “Explaining My Depression to My Mother” begins like this: “Explaining my depression to my mother: A conversation Mom, my depression is a shapeshifter One day it’s as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear…
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Black Rainbow: How Words Healed Me – My Journey Through Depression
Black Rainbow is the powerful first-person story of one woman’s struggle with depression and how she managed to recover from it through the power of poetry. In 1997, Oxford graduate, working mother and Times journalist Rachel Kelly went from feeling mildly anxious…
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