Tony Gillam explores the growing interest in this type of activity in health care and how the various forms this takes can enhance the work of practitioners and the recovery of patients

With greater awareness of the concept of creativity, mental health practitioners can learn to combine novelty, effectiveness and ethicality with discipline and playfulness to develop a more creative state of mind in their area of practice. Clinical supervision, positive risk-taking and work with arts therapists can encourage this. Contemporary mental health care needs to be multidimensional; that is knowledge-based, collaborative and holistic, and patient and recovery-centred.

The author considers the notion of creativity and the interaction between it and caring interventions. He invites mental health nurses and other practitioners to explore these concepts, and to reflect on how creativity can be applied in practice and how mental health care might be seen as a creative activity in itself.