Non-pharmacological interventions & creative mental health therapies

Non-pharmacological complex interventions designed to improve mental health: Lessons learned from creative health and therapies evaluations and studies.

Non-pharmacological complex interventions can include a number of interacting intervention components with the need for specific expertise, skills or techniques, being applied by those delivering or receiving the intervention. Contextual factors might also require greater flexibility or tailoring of intervention components, depending on the groups, individuals, setting, or organisations they take place in. Using examples of Creative Health and creative arts psychotherapies (Arts Therapies) interventions, this seminar will outline contexts and drivers for evaluation and the measurement of intervention outcomes. Through the exploration of real-world evaluations and studies, both reporting successes and challenges, a range of current issues influencing the conduct of non-pharmacological complex interventions will be highlighted. Historic conventions of evidence-based practice interventions, including conventional outcome study and evaluation designs, and research quality appraisal standards strongly influence this research. This context can lead to significant challenges in designing, developing, co-developing, and testing non-pharmacological complex interventions with and for groups of people with specific mental health support needs. Sometimes this results in a dichotomy between people reporting their personal experiences of engaging in non-pharmacological interventions and the outcomes that are reported using validated measures.

About the speaker

Dr Simon Hackett is a Consultant Art Psychotherapist who has worked in NHS mental health services for over 20 years, and a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Applied Mental Health Research at Newcastle University. Simon is the Programme Lead for the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) - Mental Health Implementation Network (MHIN), looking at closing the gap between non-pharmacological intervention evidence-based generation and implementation into practice. He has led and advised upon a wide range of evaluations and intervention studies, including UK multi-site Randomised Controlled Trials.

This event is hosted by Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities, led by Angela Woods.

This event is free to attend.

Zoom details will be circulated closer to the event.