Jenni Guentcheva

GoodNeighbor, United States

Title: Creative Health – Art And Recovery

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Biography

Dr. Jenni Guentcheva LPC, LAC, NCACII is a Bulgarian Psychologist working in Colorado, USA. Jenni is working in the space of innovative approaches to addiction treatment since 1999 and provides leadership in developing research-based trauma-focused community programming with highly effective outcomes. As an art therapist herself, she develops programs incorporating creative expression in recovery in collaboration with cultural centers and galleries in Europe an the US. 

Abstract

GoodNeighbor is an innovative mental health center consistently ranking as a Best Mental Health Practice in Southern Colorado. We work to improve access to health-promotion services through trauma-focused treatment and recovery support. Our programs also provide nurturing spaces for recovery and community events to address inequality and historic traumas. We address both addiction and mental health recovery to augment not only the biological foundation of recovery but also its psychological and social components. 
Our participants experientially began discovering that the activities visual art creation provides are a valuable tool in maintaining recovery, a concept with emerging support in health psychology studies from the last two decades (Dequeker, 2006; Archer et al., 2015; Kaptein, Hughes, Murray, Smyth, 2018, to name a few). 
Art in health care is a rapidly developing field resulting in professional societies and university departments devoted to the field named Medical Humanities or Health Humanities. Our current programming integrates participant-energized and artist-guided art groups in our Creative Heath sites that provide art sessions to those in recovery from mental illness and substance use. Through expression and self-disclosure, two of the Common Sense Model of Illness parameters of cognitive and emotional control, our participants develop positive coping. On-going program evaluation data obtained through professional research has been highly encouraging.