Poetry and healing: the proof of the pudding...

I believe poetry can contribute to healing. After a BSc in Nutrition, I worked for nine years as an NHS dietician. During that time I developed an eating disorder, bulimia. When I got married I left the profession and decided to seek help; I therefore spent a year in group psychotherapy.

During that period I completed an MA in Creative Writing which contributed to the healing process. Themes that arose during counselling provided the raw material that I then crafted into poetry.

Since completing the MA I have continued to write and perform my work; I am hoping to get 'Iona', the MA dissertation, published. The latter is a poetic novella based on my experience of getting to grips with bulimia.

How can poetry help the healing process?

1. I have difficulty verbalising emotions and ideas. When writing I have time to think away from people who, I find, inhibit thought. My internal censor is less vigilant.

2. Reading work in public helps me express emotion and use appropriate non-verbals rather than smiles. Communication barriers were broken when I showed certain poems to my family.

3. Writing can reveal things buried in the unconscious; reading other writers, dreams and automatic writing sometimes sparks this process off, e.g. Sylvia Plath's work.

4. Writing is a form of release, perhaps partly physical. Emotions are externalised. I can distance myself from, and gain a new perspective on, them.

5. Compulsive eating can be frightening, you feel out of control, almost possessed. Writing is a form of control. It enables me to explore the compulsion more fully, to identify issues and their underlying logic. In short, writing cuts bulimia down to size.

6. Notes can be compared. Suddenly you are not unique; such issues have been faced by writers, and others, since the year dot. Self respect returns, trouncing the self image of a 'weak-willed failure'. Factors that have contributed to my situation, e.g. sex discrimination, surface.

7. It is a pleasure to discover latent talents and release creativity. Crafting the raw material gives a shape and purpose to life, base metal is turned to gold. If the work could now reach, and help, others even better.

Subjective thoughts, maybe, but I feel a 'patient's' view is as valid as a therapist's. For the MA I wrote an essay comparing poetic and scientific language; the two are not so dissimilar. Science involves some very 'creative writing', e.g. when results are not those hoped for.

I appreciate that medics require 'objective proof'. The effect of both poetry and nutrition is difficult to isolate. Partly, I imagine, because their value derives from factors science cannot measure, e.g. the spiritual (if you believe in such) and happiness. 30-50% of hospital patients, it is said, show evidence of nutritional deficiencies or starvation partly due to the above.

An effective way, however, to persuade a doctor that starvation lowers morale and can, thus, delay recovery is to ask them to fast for 48 hours. Individual case studies are also helpful; an emaciated patient resurrected by careful feeding is difficult to ignore.

Doctors are not as objective as they might like to think; many factors, not just data, influence their decisions. They may be biased and only look for supporting evidence.

Much the same, I imagine, applies to proving the effect of 'writing therapy' on health. I would suggest that individual case studies, therefore, have a place; poems 'speak for themselves' and target the 'whole person' not just Spock logic. I would hasten to add that I don't believe a therapist can dictate the 'therapy' only facilitate the process. I also accept that poetry is only one tool and not everyone will want to wield it.