At the end of the course, participants are invited to create their  own personalized mental resilience plan based on what they have learned in throughout the lessons.

 

In this final exercise, the goal for participants is to think about the aspects of mental resilience that are most relevant to them personally and how you they can try to improve them, using the course material.

 

Participants are encouraged to make a concrete plan: a list of actions that they will undertake in the near future to work on their mental resilience.

 

 

Prevention Program

Personalized Mental Resilience Plan

Three main components

Seven aspects of a Resilient Artist

Background

To work on the aforementioned aspects of mental resilience as a performing artist, the prevention program consists of three main components:
 

1. Psycho-education

2. Teaching mental health challenges & coping strategies from the performing arts literature

3. Practical exercises based on well-established psychological literature.

 
 
The core of the prevention program is focused on strengthening 7 different aspects of mental resilience as a performing artists, informed by existing research on mental resilience as well as by our own data collection:
 

1. Who am I as an artist?

 

This aspect refers to improving self-reflection skills in order to promote self-awareness about potential psychological challenges and to learn how to connect such experiences to scientifically-based knowledge about mental health.

 

2. What are my goals?

 

Here, the focus lies on learning efficient goal setting, creating a personal definition of succes and to consider a cost-benefit analysis when working towards certain goals in your artistic career.

 

3. Mindset

 

For this aspect the goal is to learn to adopt a psychologically healthy mindset for pursuing a career in the performing arts. Here, the course focusses on promoting a growth mindset (rather than a fixed one), counteracting negative self-talk and learning about cognitive biases when it comes to thinking about oneself.

 

4. Selfcare

 

Here, the course teaches how to create a personalized self-care routine that allows to efficiently cope with psychological stressors that performing artists encounter in their daily lives.

 

5. Social resilience

 

This aspect refers to learning how to be mentally resilient, specifically with respect to social relationships within the career such as relationships with fellow performing artists, relationships with teachers and relationships with supervisors/superiors.

 

6. Dealing with stress and anxiety

 

Here, the focus lies on learning about the underlying working mechanisms of stress and anxiety and on utilizing this knowledge to cope with it effectively

 

7. Dealing with setbacks

 

The last aspect focussing on what to do when you are confronted with setbacks and things don't go as planned. What can you do when certain problems have already arisen?

 
Based on the existing literature, the challenges & needs for support that emerged from our interviews and focus group with performing artists and existing psychological interventions, we developed a prevention program aimed at adressing the most common mental health challenges of the artistic practice.
 
The prevention program takes the form a 6-lesson course aimed at first Bachelor students of music, dance and drama.
 
The focus of the course is on prevention and features the combination of teaching scientifically-based knowledge about mental health in the performing arts as well as practical- and self-reflection exercises.
 

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