MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health

Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry

This innovative and unique MSc in Creative Arts and Mental Health is jointly run by the Centre for Psychiatry and the Department of Drama and offers an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and research, with a particular emphasis on theatre and performance in the creative arts. It covers the history, theory, and practice of performance in relation to all aspects of mental health promotion and the prevention and treatment of mental illness. The programme is directed at a combination of education professionals, artists, scholars, and mental health practitioners. It offers students the opportunity to learn in detail, from both arts and science perspectives, about how the creative arts can be used to think critically about and engage the public with concepts and experiences of mental health and the mental health system. The course necessarily reflects a critical analysis of the scientific method(s) of mental health research and practice and explores the use of arts-based research, evaluation and dissemination methods.

The primary aims of this course are to develop students’ ability to think critically about the relationship between the arts and mental health and mental health care practices in a national and international context. Specifics aims are to develop and enhance:

• how mental health professionals, arts practitioners and others interested in mental health and wellbeing work together in both clinical and non-clinical environments;
• the ways in which mental health experiences are represented in the arts and in popular culture, and how arts-based practice can help to expand and nuance both clinical and popular understandings of patient and clinician experiences in the mental health system;
• perceptions and assumptions about the ways arts-based practices can support recovery;
• critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current practice in arts/mental health collaborations, with an eye to developing best practices for collaboration among arts workers, clinicians, mental health researchers, and – crucially – people with lived experience of mental health issues.

The course is not clinical, therefore the students will not leave with a clinical accreditation in mental health practice or art therapy. Rather, the course is practice, research and reflection-based and is designed to encourage each student, whether coming from an arts or a sciences background, to critically consider the strengths and the limitations of his or her existing knowledge base. Whereas other courses in arts and mental health hierarchise the disciplines and treat the arts as a “therapy” tool, this course seeks to interrogate the assumptions underlying such disciplinary hierarchies in order to develop genuine best practices for better, more effective collaborations among arts practitioners, health care practitioners and patients, in order to serve the interests of all who work within mental health and social care systems.

Why study your Creative Arts and Mental Health at Queen Mary?

The fantastic reputation of the School of Medicine and Dentistry and the School of English and Drama.

The new MSc in Creative Arts and Mental Health is delivered as a collaboration between the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 results have shown that Queen Mary University of London has risen to 9th place among multi-faculty institutions in the UK.

The Centre for Psychiatry was ranked 5th in the Research Excellence Framework 2014 for research on public health, health services and primary care. Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry is comprised of two world renowned teaching hospitals, St Bartholomew’s and The Royal London, which have made, and continue to make, an outstanding contribution to modern medicine. We were one of the top five in the UK for medicine in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

The Department of Drama was ranked 1st in the Research Excellence Framework 2014, and is consistently rated among the top programmes in the country on a variety of league tables. Drama’s core faculty include internationally recognized experts on intercultural theatre and performance, early modern theatre and performance, live art, applied performance in the community, and theatre and performance made for and with vulnerable populations.

This course involves the regular participation and contribution of numerous community partners (including local, national, and international arts organisations), leading mental health professionals, and applied theatre scholars and practitioners, representative of both of the MSc’s core fields. Combining critical mental health sciences and research methods with a rigorous study of the history, theory, and practice of performance with and about mental illness, the MSc includes modules both separately and jointly taught across its two core fields, in order to ensure students receive rigorous training in best practices in each field, as well as plenty of opportunity to think, work, read, write, and make performance that reaches across both fields.

For more information about intercalation please visit the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry website.

Entry requirements

• Successfully completed at least 3 years of the MBBS, MbChB or equivalent medical course
• (for clinically based Masters this must include the equivalent of one year of patient based teaching (in hospital/GP practices/clinics)).
• Passed year 3 or 4 exams immediately prior to entry at the first opportunity.
• Demonstrate a clear and unequivocal interest in the field by written application +/- interview.
• For students internal and external to QMUL it is confirmed that the beginning of the first term for the following year starts after all the QMUL Masters assessments are completed.

Closing date

Monday 4 February 2019