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Art-based interventions are gaining renewed momentum in mental health care. For example, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines for psychosis and schizophrenia suggest that creative arts therapies are effective in improving negative symptoms of psychosis. However, more research is needed to establish these interventions as part of standard treatment in psychiatry. This panel presents two distinct approaches: visual art therapy and participatory arts. Visual art therapy has emerged from clinical practice and maintains a well-established tradition led by trained art therapists, while participatory arts, which originated in the art world, has only recently been adapted for mental health settings, where professional artists lead interventions. The focus will be on the connection between art as a recovery tool for people suffering from psychosis from four perspectives: clinical, research, artistic, and patient.

The panel comprises three parts, each presenting phenomenologically grounded research. Professor Borut Skodlar will present results from an art therapy intervention used in psychotherapeutic treatment for psychosis in Ljubljana. Birgit Bundesen, psychiatrist and founder of The Danish Center for Arts and Mental Health, will present research findings from a manualized participatory arts project. This Copenhagen-based pilot program is driven by artist-socentist duo's developping artist facilitated workshops with video, creative writing, and musical improvisation as adjuncts to standard care. The final segment features a creative writing workshop from the center's REWRITALIZE program, led by Danish poet Sebastian Nathan, who brings his lived psychiatric experience to the process.