On learning from being the in-patient

Abstract

This case study concerns the dual experience of being both a mental health professional (art therapist) and a service user on a mental health inpatient ward. The study uses heuristic methodology to explore how the experience of being a service user affected being a service provider. The art therapist was unable to use art therapy when a service user and this offers a rare chance to try to understand the barriers and opportunities to engaging with therapy in acute states. The experience of being an inpatient was both hard to recall and to articulate and so a repeating interview cycle approach was used involving another art therapist asking questions, working from a comparable provider perspective, aiming to understand the user experience. Both parties grouped the interviews transcripts into key learning themes.