Textherapy: Creative Writing for Mental Health
Ten guidelines for designing creative workshops for personal development
We created a short guidebook that gathers the key insights from our work with local communities.
We share it with the hope that it will spark ideas for developing similar creative workshops for personal growth or support you in your work in other ways. Before diving into the insights, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for conducting the workshop. We warmly invite you to see them as an invitation and to explore the secret power of Textherapy yourself.
About the Project.
Texterapy: Creative Writing for Mental Health, co-funded by the European Union, was created in response to the local community’s need for connection, personal growth, and creativity. The initiative was launched by a group of young people, eager to gain hands-on experience in leading creative workshops that support personal development.
From August 2024 to June 2025, under the mentorship of Dr Alja Adam, a group of young volunteers underwent training, developed a workshop titled Textherapy and held it seven times within local communities, improving it along the way.
The workshops brought together 9 men and 38 women, 47 participants in total, with birth years ranging from 1933 to 2002. Together, we created over 14,100 written words, peeked through more than 50 windows of imagination and shared countless unforgettable moments.
What brought us the most joy was the overwhelmingly positive feedback. An impressive 9.7 out of 10 participants said they would happily recommend the Textherapy workshop to a friend. At each session, at least one person expressed the wish to meet again, and in some groups, participants even continued to gather and create independently. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to everyone who became and remained a part of our story over these past months!
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.