Mental anguish, healing verse

“I think poetry can be great for summing up the experience of life, and mental health represents a great width and depth of often difficult experiences.”

People suffering from mental health problems can find the world to be a lonely place. Giving these vulnerable people the opportunity to express themselves through words can prove to be a very theraputic process.
 
Zoe van Zwanenberg of the Scottish Leadership Foundation and poet Elspeth Murray describe the positive effect poetry had on a recent mental health conference, while storyteller Donald Smith describes the power of people telling their own stories. Below is Elspeth reciting one of the poems included in the conference.

Video Transcription

Zoe van Zwanenberg: “The International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership, or IIMHL, is a learning organisation bringing together people who share a concern about how do you really improve the quality of mental health care.”

Elspeth Murray: “I met Zoe van Zwanenberg from the Scottish Leadership Foundation through an event that Arts & Business did where I was reading poems.”

Zoe van Zwanenberg: “Elspeth took part in the whole conference, including the Partnership Programme which was the first two days of it, where she sat with groups listening to what they were saying and reflected that back to them through poetry. But she was also learning about the mental health issues, and then through the formal part of the conference, she was doing readings and running workshops.”

Elspeth Murray: “I think poetry can be great for summing up the experience of life, and mental health represents a great width and depth of often difficult experiences.”

Donald Smith: “The telling and sharing of stories is empowering for people, and that then perhaps has a particular relevance for people who for some reason are marginalised or disempowered. That goes back, of course, to the very roots of storytelling, to an art that was described as a folk culture - in other words, it was owned by people, it wasn't run by powerful patrons or institutions.”

Zoe van Zwanenberg: “The feedback that we got was that Elspeth was the highest-rated thing about the whole conference, in the formal feedback. And we've had a number of groups that have followed on, wanting to continue to work with Elspeth. And in addition to that, the next IIMHL conference in Canada also had a resident poet.”

Elspeth Murray: “I've worked with poetry in a number of other conferences since that mental health conference. Some of them have been for nurses or for carers, and I've also worked directly with people with mental health problems, using writing as a way of experessing their experiences, and that's been really rewarding to do.”