ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the form of a three-way dialogue between a service user and two IAP clinicians, reflecting together on therapy, collaboration, co-design, and co-production. The discussion offers a contained, creative, and reflective space to explore therapeutic practice, starting from the point of view of someone with lived experience as a service user, artist, and arts in health practitioner. The exchange aims to bring to the fore some choice points in the ways that the therapeutic relationship and using the arts as a means of communication and a support for recovery are engaged with in therapy sessions.
Consideration is also given to the sort of approach that might support the active involvement of service users in all of the processes of therapy – from assessment, treatment planning, designing interventions and managing risk, evaluation, and research. The therapeutic journey, with its challenges, is reflected on too, in order to provide insights into the efficacy and benefit of the visual arts to support recovery and well-being.
The conclusions highlight the importance of learning from lived experience in practice and research, the value of collaboration and co-production in therapy, and how working together in this way can empower both the service user and the therapist.
