Craft activities in groups at meeting places: supporting mental health users' everyday occupations

Abstract

Procedures for paradigmatic analysis were followed, and brought forward three themes: doing crafts in a group facilitated stability and routines, skills and abilities, and peer support. The discussion reflected knowledge and experiences of crafts as an activity with a low-risk threshold for participation and its healing value. How the doing of craft activities in a group offered transactional space to gain experiences to manage everyday occupations was further discussed.

Development of an Individualized Occupational Therapy Programme and its Effects on the Neurocognition, Symptoms and Social Functioning of Patients with Schizophrenia

“…In the IOT programme, we used constitutive handicraft activities with the individualized coaching of occupational therapists as a means of improving the cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. Handicraft activities have been widely used as OT therapeutic modalities (Horghagen et al, ). Various occupational activities, including handicraft activities, are also widely used in OT for schizophrenia in Japan.…”

Women’s place-making through craft in post-earthquake Christchurch

“…The restorative capacity of crafting to help women cope with significant stressors and major life transitions has been identified in earlier research (Pöllänen, 2013;Riley, Corkhill, & Morris, 2013). Multiple studies note how engaging in crafting activity helps to ameliorate and manage the effects of living with mental health conditions and physical illness resulting in chronic pain (Collier, Wayment, & Birkett, 2016;Cour, Josephsson, & Luborsky, 2007); come to terms with bereavement (Kohut, 2011); generate a sense of empowerment (Maidment & Macfarlane, 2011); with crafting groups providing places of relational safety, support, learning and inspiration (Schofield-Tomschin & Littrell, 2001;Horghagen, Fostvedt, & Alsaker, 2014). It is at this point that research on disaster recovery and that related to crafting intersect with both spheres of research signalling ways for fostering wellbeing.…”

“…Specifically, leisure activity provides space for "distraction, a respite and escape from daily stress" where people are able to exercise a sense of agency and control (Denovan & Macaskill, 2017, p. 452). Meeting in groups to craft has been found to generate a sense of stability and routine while promoting participation, inclusion, and cooperation (Horghagen et al, 2014). These factors crucially contribute to garnering a measure of control (Pöllänen, 2015), particularly significant in a milieu where many aspects of daily living are subject to uncertainty as is…”

“…The capacity for both social connectedness and participation to be protective and curative factors for mental health is well researched (Saeri, Cruwys, Barlow, Stronge, & Sibley, 2017) with notions of belonging and inclusion being integral to strengthening wellbeing. In a context where everyday life had become chaotic and simple tasks like doing the laundry or getting to work were problematic, drawing upon an established routine of attending a craft group provided a sense of routine where a network of relational safety and support could be found (Horghagen et al, 2014).…”

A participatory discourse analysis of service users’ accounts of staffed meeting places in Norwegian community mental health care

“…This is, however, nuanced by studies suggesting that there appears to be a pattern of differing preferred occupations among users. Some users in greater distress preferred to just be in the meeting place while others preferred to engage in more task-orientated occupations that were increasingly demanding (Argentzell, Håkansson, & Eklund, 2012;Horghagen, Fostvedt, & Alsaker, 2014;Tjörnstrand, Bejerholm, & Eklund, 2011).…”