2024-04-19 07:45:25
At the Romorantin-Lanthenay day hospital, a storytelling workshop offers a space for breaks and dreams for small groups of patients.
“Stories, myths and legends take us to an elsewhere that nourishes here. They tell us regarding experiences that span millennia: birth, love, fear, conflict, loss, death. » (1) The Romorantin-Lanthenay day hospital (GHT Santé Loir-et-Cher) offers a therapeutic workshop based on storytelling. From work on speaking and sharing, the objective is to help people to meet/face the gaze of others and to perceive themselves as subjects.
In practice, the workshop brings together every Thursday, from 2 to 4 p.m., a group of 4 to 8 patients suffering from mental disorders. Everyone commits to sessions of at least three months (on medical prescription). Co-hosted by two nurses, including a specialist trained in storytelling, it takes place according to a well-defined framework:
– welcome time, discussion of the previous session and announcement of the story of the day;
– Oral “warm-up”: following the theme of the story, participants are invited to bounce back with their words, their thoughts, their ideas, etc.
– a story brought by a caregiver is read, told…;
– time for exchanges and sharing, explanations;
– patients who wish to do so take the place of the storyteller, and tell the story in turn, with their voices, their gestures, their rhythms, their gaze…
So, at the end of the session, “everyone leaves with a story in their bag, which they can tell once more, to a friend, to their family, to themselves, or even to an audience during intra- or extra-hospital occasions”, specifies the team. The environment is neat: the workshop is held in a welcoming room, with comfortable and enveloping seats. A beautiful “storyteller’s chair” was produced by the HDJ’s “wood” workshop…
Tales require a lot of attention, listening and concentration, and silence, to be understood and memorized. “To participate, you bring your voice, your diction, your attitudes, your body patterns into play. Throughout the sessions, everyone learns to manage their stress, fears and anxieties. Exposing yourself to others, familiar or unknown audiences, requires you to work on self-confidence and self-esteem.”
This project is a “favorite” of the jury for the 2023 Psychiatry Care Teams Prize, organized by Mental Health with the support of the Fondation de France.
• Contact : Yves Hemeret, IPA, yveshemeret@hotmail.fr
1– The tale, an elsewhere that nourishes the here, Inès Cazalas, in: La Grande Oreille, April 2023, n°90.
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