All Awareness and No Action: Can Social Work Leverage Creative Arts’ Potential?

Abstract

Social work is grounded with an emphasis on promoting the well-being being of individuals and families with an explicit recognition of how the environment plays a significant role in the unfolding of well-being. Unfortunately, the profession’s commitment to maintaining the infrastructure for social work research, education, and practice that helps students and professionals focus on the environmental forces that create, contribute to, and address problems of the living sometimes feels superficial. These trends have made it difficult to realize the effectiveness and promise of integrating creative arts into social work practice. The present article discusses how social work efforts with creative arts will have limited influence if their context, underlying assumptions, and framing are misaligned with the experiential realities of clients; if gatekeeping is too rigid or biased to effectively grow the arts-based infrastructure; and if the underlying assumptions that define well-being outcomes are proportionately narrow, deficit oriented, and short-term focused.

A Systematic Review of Music-Based Interventions to Improve Treatment Engagement and Mental Health Outcomes for Adolescents and Young Adults

“…Overall, holistically integrated interventions have the broadest scope of significant findings with combinations of internalizing, externalizing, and socio-emotional outcomes. For example, Travis and colleagues ( 2019 ) provided activities such as therapeutic beat making, lyric analysis, and group expressive activities (e.g., songwriting) to reduce depression and anxiety and promote positive youth development. Furthermore, this was the only typology category with studies that found significant effects for externalizing, internalizing, and social and emotional outcomes (Currie & Startup, 2012 ; Kõiv & Kaudne, 2015 ).…”

“…The authors discuss how the process of listening, analyzing, and discussing the meaning of song lyrics may serve as a mechanism through which music evokes emotions and regulation capacity. Similarly, Travis and colleagues ( 2019 ) tested a program that blended Hip Hop and Empowerment (HHE) and Therapeutic Beat Making (TBM) strategies; the authors discuss pathways to change that include evocation, modulation, and termination of emotions (Koelsch, 2015 ) and self-concept, relational, and expressive processes, respectively.…”

“…Further, funding agencies and review panels that are less familiar with music-based interventions can help this process by remaining open to these proposals, especially those demonstrating strong methodological rigor. Second, “non-traditional” approaches continue to face barriers in training and sharing of expertise within social work education and professional development opportunities (Travis, 2019 ). There is a need for more education, dissemination, and training focused on music and expressive therapies to help clinicians develop the skills needed to use these strategies in practice.…”

Primjena Umjetničkog Stvaralaštva U Profesiji Socijalnog Rada

“…Umjetničko izražavanje koristi se i kao sredstvo za postizanje oporavka kod osoba koje pate od narušenog mentalnog zdravlja. Korištenje potencijala postojećih umjetničkih djela te stvaranje novih pokazalo se djelotvornim načinom poticanja oporavka te osobnog rasta i razvoja te se stoga koristi u različitim terapijskim intervencijama (Travis, 2017. ; Mitchell i sur., 2019.; Flynn, 2019.).…”

“…Glazba prodire u duboke slojeve i područja osobnosti gdje ponekad nije moguće prodrijeti riječima (Marasović i Blažeka Kokorić, 2014.) te ima brojne pozitivne učinke na dobrobit osobe (Travis, 2017.). Najpoznatiji oblik korištenja glazbe u sočlanci cijalnom radu i drugim profesijama koje se bave područjem mentalnog zdravlja je glazboterapija.…”