ABSTRACT
The consultant psychiatrist is still important in orchestrating and conducting the score, but there will be leaders in other sections of the orchestra as well as soloists. Some practitioners of dramatherapy will belong to other professions such as occupational therapy, clinical psychology or medicine, and of these some will be more dramatically orientated while others will work towards the psychodramatic and psychotherapeutic ends of the spectrum. The techniques of dramatherapy, detailed elsewhere in this book, have their parallels in conventional psychiatric practice. Art and music therapy were already established with own criteria for competence and the progression to dramatherapy seemed in place. Dramatherapy is, in part, a skill and, in part, a professional activity in its own right. In the United Kingdom, although many dramatherapists work outside the psychiatric and mental handicap components of the National Health Service, there is growth potential for dramatherapy in the service, even though current financial constraints will first have to be loosened.
