Creative Arts in Counseling and Mental Health

Drawing on new paradigms and evidence-based discoveries in neuroscience, narrative psychology, and creativity theory, this text explores the beneficial role of expressive arts within a recovery perspective. A framework of practice principles for the visual arts, creative writing, music, drama, dance, and digital storytelling is addressed across a number of settings and populations, providing readers with an accessible overview of techniques taught in counseling programs in the U.S. and abroad.

Philip Neilsen, MA, PhD, ASA is both a senior academic and an internationally acclaimed author and poet. He founded the creative writing program at the Queensland University of Technology where he is currently adjunct professor and also teaches poetics at the University of Queensland.  He has published five books of poetry, including Without an Alibi (Salt: Cambridge, 2008), five novels/novellas, and has been widely anthologised in Australia and the USA. His creative work has been translated, including into German, Chinese and Korean.  As an academic he has contributed scholarly works on literature and on the use of creative writing as mental health therapy. Philip has been president of PEN International for Australia North, has served on the Australia Council for the Arts and is co-editor (with Professor David Morley, University of Warwick, UK) of The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing. Robert King is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor in the School of Psychology and Counselling at Queensland University of Technology.  He is a fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and a member of the College of Clinical Psychology. Professor King holds a MA (Clinical Psychology) from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from Monash University.  Robert′s primary areas of research focus include: the impact and effectiveness of online delivery of counselling and psychotherapy services; the role of creative therapies in mental health; development and evaluation of models of mental health service delivery; and the mental health workforce: training, structure, organization and management.  Robert publishes extensively in Australian and International peer reviewed journals.  He is Associate Editor for the US based journal Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research and was for many years the Peer Review Editor for Psychotherapy in Australia.  Felicity Baker is a Music Therapist, Associate Professor in Music Therapy and currently an Australia Research Council Future Fellow (2010-2015) based at The University of Melbourne. she is currently Associate Editor the Journal of Music Therapy and immediate past President of The Australian Music Therapy Association Inc, the peak body of the discipline in Australia.  Felicity has established herself as an international leader in music therapy and is regularly invited to teach in institutions through Asia, UK/Northern Europe and the USA. Felicity is recognised for her research expertise in therapeutic songwriting and in neurorehabilitation. Her text Song Writing Methods, Techniques and Clinical Applications for Music Therapy Clinicians, Educators and Students is a best seller (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) which has sold over 4,000 copies and has been translated into Korean and Italian. Felicity is a member of a Research Consortium involving music therapy researchers from 9 international universities from USA, UK, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Australia with international recognition of being at the forefront of music therapy research. Her innovative research has attracted significant media attention. She has achieved a strong publication record (4 books, 17 book chapters, and 70+ peer reviewed journal articles) and developed a recognized capacity for cross-disciplinary research.