Diane Parker writes about her experience working as a dance movement psychotherapist in a forensic mental health setting.
I am sitting across the room from Jasmine, a young woman convicted of arson. For the past two years, Jasmine has been an inpatient of a specialist medium-security forensic clinic of a psychiatric hospital, where I had a clinical placement as part of my final-year training as a dance movement psychotherapist. During that time, she found it difficult to speak about the arson. Jasmine was referred for Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) as a way to better understand what had led her to do this.
Jasmine and I met for weekly sessions but at first she felt too embarrassed to use movement as her therapy with me; however she enjoyed sitting with me in silence listening to music. I suggested she bring her own music CDs to the sessions and for the next three weeks, we listened to rap artists such as Eminem and Tupac use words typically associated with violence. Afterwards, Jasmine said she found the music ‘comforting’; that the lyrics speak of a world of pain and violence to which she can relate... Keep reading on Arts Alliance
I am sitting across the room from Jasmine, a young woman convicted of arson. For the past two years, Jasmine has been an inpatient of a specialist medium-security forensic clinic of a psychiatric hospital, where I had a clinical placement as part of my final-year training as a dance movement psychotherapist. During that time, she found it difficult to speak about the arson. Jasmine was referred for Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) as a way to better understand what had led her to do this.
Jasmine and I met for weekly sessions but at first she felt too embarrassed to use movement as her therapy with me; however she enjoyed sitting with me in silence listening to music. I suggested she bring her own music CDs to the sessions and for the next three weeks, we listened to rap artists such as Eminem and Tupac use words typically associated with violence. Afterwards, Jasmine said she found the music ‘comforting’; that the lyrics speak of a world of pain and violence to which she can relate... Keep reading on Arts Alliance