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Resilience and creativity
Abstract
This chapter examines the role of creativity in resilience in the palliative care setting. It discusses the common knowledge that many famous artists create in order to survive and highlights the stories regarding a myriad of great artworks relating their creation to the darkest of times for their creators. Examples of these are the second piano Concerto of Serge Rachmaninov and Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. This chapter suggests that this same process of creative thinking can be applied to cope with a loss, trauma, or bereavement.
... The St Christopher's arts program pioneered working with young people in the palliative care space (Hartley, 2007(Hartley, , 2011(Hartley, , 2012(Hartley, , 2016. The program used theatre, storytelling, multi-media, songwriting, visual arts, and fashion design programs to enable young people and terminally ill people to learn about each other's lives. ...
Renegade Stories is a qualitative and critical examination of the lived experiences of 12 activist deathworkers in Australia who, despite the dominant biomedical approach to end of life and deathcare, are guided by social approaches to dying, death and loss. This thesis examines the strategies and tactics institutional and community-based deathworkers develop to create change. These practices were shaped and influenced by their workplace setting and personal and professional experiences about loss and death (death literacy). In response to these findings, this research argues for greater integration and collaboration between the formal and informal components of the death system.
... A measure of General Self-Efficacy [59] that describes the beliefs in one's ability to mobilize one's resources to accomplish a given task, which is related to resilience [60,61]. Resilience and creativity are connected [62], thus the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors [63] was also included in the test battery. The scale converges with self-reports of creativity, and has been proved to be a valid measure of everyday creativity [64]. ...
Ego-resiliency (ER) is a capacity that enables individuals to adapt to constantly changing environmental demands. The goal of our research was to identify components of Ego-resiliency, and to test the reliability and the structural and convergent validity of the refined version of the ER11 Ego-resiliency scale. In Study 1 we used a factor analytical approach to assess structural validity and to identify factors of Ego-resiliency. Comparing alternative factor-structures, a hierarchical model was chosen including three factors: Active Engagement with the World (AEW), Repertoire of Problem Solving Strategies (RPSS), and Integrated Performance under Stress (IPS). In Study 2, the convergent and divergent validity of the ER11 scale and its factors and their relationship with resilience were tested. The results suggested that resiliency is a double-faced construct, with one function to keep the personality system stable and intact, and the other function to adjust the personality system in an adaptive way to the dynamically changing environment. The stability function is represented by the RPSS and IPS components of ER. Their relationship pattern is similar to other constructs of resilience, e.g. the Revised Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (R-CD-RISC). The flexibility function is represented by the unit of RPSS and AEW components. In Study 3 we tested ER11 on a Hungarian online representative sample and integrated the results in a model of general resiliency. This framework allows us to grasp both the stability-focused and the plasticity-focused nature of resiliency.
... In the UK, the St Christopher's Schools Project has already started to influence the development of sustainable policies and practices (Hartley, 2007) in the field of end of life care. More particularly, it has been recommended as a practice for all hospices in the UK (DH, 2008). ...
The reality of death and dying is rarely discussed openly in modern Western societies, while death sometimes is even considered to be a ‘failure’ in the context of traditional, medically-focused healthcare systems. Similarly, loss and transition are part of the National School Curriculum in the UK, but many schools still find approaching these subjects difficult. In this context St Christopher’s hospice in London has initiated and delivered the ‘Schools Project’ since 2005.
The St Christopher’s Schools Project is an innovative community arts programme. It takes the form of short-term collaborative arts projects between terminally ill patients and students from primary and secondary schools, as well as colleges within the hospice’s catchment area. The Schools Project has attracted the interest of many other hospices, as well as other healthcare institutions and inspired the development of similar projects, both nationally and internationally.
The aim of the Schools Project is to introduce the hospice and its work to the school communities in a creative and non-threatening way. Within a structured framework students are given the opportunity to interact and engage in music and art making together with terminally ill patients, culminating in an exhibition or performance. Promoting healthier attitudes towards death and dying amongst the students, their teachers, school peers, parents and carers, is at the core of the project.
This paper presents the philosophy and aims, as well as the process and outcomes, of the Schools Project. Additionally, an overview of all of the projects that have taken place at St Christopher’s since 2005, as well as some prospects for future development, are given. This will hopefully stimulate a constructive dialogue with regards to the potential role of hospices and the arts in the promotion of health and death education, as well as their potential impact on the development of sustainable healthcare policies and practices not only in palliative care, but also in other health and social care contexts.
In recent years the question of coping and resiliency has become a crucial element in crisis intervention. This chapter will review the model developed some 30 years ago known as the BASIC Ph model, and its roots in the foundational theories of psychology and in research worldwide on coping and resiliency. Some of the concepts related to coping and resiliency will be reviewed, together with findings from our studies and suggestions for an integrated model to approach major incidents will be presented.
This article outlines key approaches for a health promoting approach to end-of-life care. Although direct service provision for end-of-life care and bereavement are crucial to any public health approach to dying, death and loss, a broader public health approach – one that targets people in good health and outside acute episodes of need – is also vital to building a community's capacity for resilience and self-care. The approaches described in this article include community development, death education and social marketing, partnerships between statutory services and communities, local policy changes and critical reflection. International examples of these approaches are described with the aim of stimulating discussion and debate about their potential and worth in bereavement care.
This intimate stranger.
- Mayne
Vincent Van Gogh as Artist—A psychoanalytic reflection.
- Meissner