Transforming Trauma through an Arts Festival: A Psychosocial Case Study

People from refugee backgrounds experience distinctively complex situations pre- and post-resettlement and are at heightened risks of suicide. The bulk of research on refugee suicide and suicidal ideation is based on diagnostic perspectives, biomedical approaches, and quantitative measures. To explore lived experience of suicide among refugee communities in more depth, this review highlights the need for qualitative, creative methods and a different paradigm to conceptualise suicide research from a social and cultural perspective as an alternative to framing and treating suicidality purely as a mental health issue. Situational and lived experience-based knowledge can significantly expand understandings of how to curb the rise in suicidal ideation and reduce suicide risks among refugees. In this context, creative research methods can be excellent tools to uncover the deeply contextual dimensions of suicidality. When interdisciplinary research explores subjective and sociocultural meanings attached to suicidal ideation, there is a greater potential to develop culturally safe supports, which are models attuned to cultural norms as determined by those most affected by lived experience of an issue or problem. Qualitative suicide research using creative methods and grounded in sociocultural knowledge can address the multidimensional and situational factors affecting refugee communities to improve interventions beyond medical framings.

Section: Creative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suicide Research with Refugee Communities: The Case for a Qualitative, Sociocultural, and Creative Approach

Lenette

2023

“…The project is framed as a cultural rather than medical or pathologising response to trauma; in other words, trauma is understood as the effect of 'what happens to us, not what's wrong with us' (Article One and The Big Anxiety 2023). This is particularly important in the context of negative experiences of the health system reported by participants (Bennett et al 2023) but also more widely by First Nations Australians (Prevention and Response to Violence Abuse and Neglect Government Relations (PARVAN 2023)). As one participant commented:…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Trauma To Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In open-ended interviews, following the initial workshop in Warwick in April 2022, participants reported experiences of self-transformation or "growth" that in some cases were dramatic ("maybe ten years of growth in a short span of time"), manifesting as feelings of connection to both self and community (Bennett et al 2023). They spoke of grief and pain being "suppressed" and finding an outlet through the workshops.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Trauma To Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"Becoming" in adulthood is largely an "internal matter", involving things like "being present to one's feelings" or "actively developing one's own creative potential" (Ogden 2022, p. 6). Creativity here can be understood both as the realisation of agency and potential and as the bottom-up exercise of creative apperception (Bennett et al 2023): the ability to intentionally shape one's environment and the capacity to be sensitised to it. However, Winnicott's writing on growth specifically references how we make use of external objects or aesthetic resources, along with other relational experiences, taking these into ourselves.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Trauma To Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this regard, our art-based programs comprise both purposefully designed aesthetic resources (in particular, audio-visual, immersive experiences in our case) and psychosocial design, which ensures the optimal conditions for transformation. The latter, we have previously suggested, encompasses the in-event facilitation as well as a psychosocial design/planning process that attends to the affordances in and around the event: the material and intangible features of a space that promote options for action or opportunities for experiencing (Bennett et al 2022(Bennett et al , 2023.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Trauma To Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Connecting Us Back to Ourselves: Aesthetic Experience as a Means to Growth after Trauma

Bennett,

Kenning,

Wobcke

et al. 2023

Self Cite

This article examines the experience and effects of a trauma-responsive program that uses creative methods to address the ongoing psychosocial impacts of transgenerational trauma and youth suicide, which disproportionately affect First Nations people in Australia. Our aim is to understand how the aesthetic (sensory-affective) dimensions of such a program serve to promote experiences of growth after trauma, manifesting in a sense of connection to both self and community. The paper focuses on the second of two immersive, experiential workshops delivered seven months apart in the regional town of Warwick in Queensland, Australia. In the light of self-reports of growth and personal transformation following the initial workshop, the paper examines the key drivers of such growth, focusing in particular on how trauma-related experience is metabolised through cultural containment. It builds on Bion’s concept of container/contained, combining analysis of the affordances of immersion. Framed in cultural rather than medical terms, the larger goal of the paper is to establish how cultural programs fill a gap in trauma informed support, facilitating the processing of trauma.

Aesthetic Enactment: Engagement with Art Evoking Traumatic Loss

Froggett

Bennett

2023

Self Cite

This article analyses audience responses to two creative works inspired by traumatic loss—the first, a performance presentation, recounting events from the author’s adolescence; the second, a short film about a suicide in the filmmaker’s family. Both were shown in 2017 as part of a mental health arts festival, attracting audiences with affinity for the lived experiences portrayed. Given the potential for such works to give rise to negative feelings and/or to retrigger trauma, the objective of this research was to understand firstly whether audiences could process the trauma conveyed in a contained and facilitative setting and, secondly, how the specific aesthetic modality of each work supported this processing. The psychosocial methodology adopted consisted of a group-based, image-led associative method—the visual matrix—which invites participants to express their sensory-affective and felt responses to a creativework. In the case of both works, the visual matrix gave rise to a distinctive form of aesthetic enactment, expressed through rhythm and image association. This imagistic and ‘rhythmic’ mode of engagement appeared to be key to the re-symbolisation of trauma for the audiences. The implication of this study is that the re-visiting of potentially distressing experiences in an aesthetically mediated, containing setting is potentially reparative in its effect.