Arts for the Blues - a creative, evidence-based psychotherapy for depression

In this seminar, Dr Joanna Omylinska-Thurston will discuss her experience creating, researching, and delivering Arts for the Blues—a creative, evidence-based psychotherapy for depression.

According to the World Health Organization (2021), depression affects over 280 million people worldwide and in the UK, it is one of the main mental health problems affecting 21% of adults (Office for National Statistics, 2022). Therefore, following Medical Research Council’s recommendations (Skivington et al, 2021), Dr Omylinska-Thurston and her team have developed Arts for the Blues, a manualised creative psychotherapy for depression that capitalizes on best practice from evidence-based approaches for depression. The model (Omylinska-Thurston et al, 2020) is based on a synthesis of evidence (Parsons et al 2019), public feedback (Haslam et al 2019), contributions from National Health Service (NHS) Talking Therapies service staff and service users (Karkou et al 2022) and creative input (Thurston et al 2022). The intervention has been delivered with a group of adults at the mental health charity MIND (Omylinska-Thurston et al., in preparation), who found the intervention helpful. Dr Omylinska-Thurston and her team are currently delivering the model with adults, children, and healthcare staff in the NHS and charity settings, gathering evidence base for the approach. They have been awarded further NIHR funding to develop feasibility RCTs for adults and children within the NHS.