Abstract

Dying, Bereavement and the Healing Arts describes a range of successful programmes pioneered by artists, writers, nurses, musicians, therapists, social workers, and chaplains in palliative care settings. These range from simple painting and writing activities to organized communal activities like writing and performing a play.

The arts are shown to offer a means to reflect on memories, hopes, fears and anxieties, and gently explore the emotional, spiritual, and psychological issues which can aid a fuller understanding of oneself and one's condition. The arts also serve as a way to communicate difficult and complex feelings to professionals or family members not possible in everyday conversation.

Dying, Bereavement and the Healing Arts offers valuable insights and inspiration for any practitioner working in a palliative care setting.

Dying, Bereavement and the Healing Arts offers valuable insights and inspiration for any practitioner working in a palliative care setting. In my opinion, this is a rare case of something doing exactly what it says on the tin.
Dramatherapy
The writing is blunt, the topics heart-wrenching, and the words poignant, addressing issues such as the death of a beloved child, spouse, parent or friend; the pain of illness and treatment; and the helplessness of watching a loved one suffer. Although these are hard topics to consider, it can also be a relief to have difficult subjects acknowledged... DYING BEREAVEMENT AND THE HEALING ARTS reminds readers that creative expression is available to everyone as a means to understanding and growing through life's changes and challenges.
Journal of the American Art Therapy Association
This is a thought provoking book which invites the reader to consider how art can be healing for the patient, the bereaved and the healthcare professional... The common thread throughout the chapters is how being creative often speaks new leases of life in both patient and those surround her. At the end of the day the book shows how the creative arts have hidden health benefits for patients, the bereaved and healthcare professionals whether that comes from looking at Van Gogh, listening to Bach, writing a poem or moulding some clay.
Ian Stirling, Scottish Journal of Healthcare Chaplaincy
Each chapter is very diverse with contributions from patients, survivors, professional healthcare workers and artists. I would recommend this book to all. As healthcare professionals we can never stop trying to understand our fellow human beings hopes and fears.
Journal of Community Nursing
Gillie Bolton has been an inspirational voice and a practitioner in the involvement which has simulated a wider appreciation of what "makes" health. This volume of twenty essays is a delight - rather like a well-prepared buffet - something to nourish those seeking deeper food for thought and practice. This book will both feed any reader who wishes to be enriched by listening to experience and also find a way to express what is humane in the face of human frailty.
The Christian Parapsychologist
This book should be sought by anyone interested in the potential of their own creativity and others to help them discover fresh and fulfilling ways to heal in the complex situations surrounding serious illness and loss. It can also be recommended to students and researchers in the palliative field to help them develop a truly holistic mode to investigate this field.
Hospice Information Bulletin, Kate Powis, lecturer and researcher at St Helena Hospice, Colchester, UK
Bolton's collection serves up national and international sources of inspiration in the healing arts...This text...can be seen not only as offering accounts of the role of creativity in varying context of palliative care, but also as a collation of creative acts in their own right. Poetry, photographs, painting, excerpts from dialogue and profoundly moving reflexive writing are all presented to inspire the reader to consider their own creative responses to the world and their part in it...This book should be sought by anyone interested in the potential of their own creativity and others to help them discover fresh and fulfilling ways to heal in the complex situations surrounding serious illness and loss. It can also be recommended to students and researchers in the palliative field to help them develop a truly holistic mode to investigate this field.
Hospice Information Bulletin, Kate Powis, lecturer and researcher at St Helena Hospice, Colchester, UK
For anyone curious about how it is that the arts can evoke, enliven, reassure, educate, recount and then enable us to share with others, this is the place to start.
Bereavement Care