The HEROINES training course is specially designed to address women with mental health issues living in rural or isolated areas. It provides a curriculum and an effective methodology to professionals of the mental health field on writing therapy.
The core idea of the HEROINES methodology seeks to make women with mental issues become models of overcoming, or Heroines, to inspire another women facing similar situations.
The course offers the participants inspiration to raise awareness for women about their rights, about gender equality and how to recognize harassment and gender violence. In this stage, several Role Models (women with successful overcoming stories) are used to discover and analyse gender issues, and also to inspire and motivate the participants. Then, the participants write their own texts, being a tool to express their emotions by using writing and becoming the protagonist of their own story of overcoming.
The training materials were developed by renowned experts on writing therapy: The British Metanoia institute, providing high-quality training in the psychological therapies for more than 30 years, and the Finnish Association of Biblio-Poetry Therapy, the first association of its kind in Europe, founded in 1981. This last organization has recently published an article about group poetry for people with schizophrenia (LINK TO THE ARTICLE). One of the findings is that poetry therapy gives hope to clients and therapists to face the future, it can be a meaningful process well worth to be included in a rehabilitation program. As stated in the article “for some people, writing is a better form to express themselves than talking. It should be a possible form of communication, enhancing enjoyable and shared meaning-making in therapies”.
The didactic materials were tested during eight months in four pilot experiences in Spain, Slovenia, Greece and Finland. We had the opportunity to reach similar conclusions that in the research explained before: the training course offers a new tool for clients and therapists to express themselves and positively enhances the recovery process from a mental illness. Group poetry offers to women a safe environment to express freely and share experiences related to abuse. The HEROINES methodology fosters women’s competences, making them aware about their rights, contributing to their recovery and making them visible through their writings, as New Heroines from XXI century.