PROMOTING MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION THROUGH THE INTERNET, ELECTRONIC RESOURCES AND CREATIVE WRITING

Writing is a medium of making sense of experience and arriving at a deeper understanding of the self. Writing therapy is a fairly new discipline, which uses creative writing to help people face problems by exploring and expressing them in writing. Creative writing used as therapy has been put into practice by educators, arts therapists, health care professionals, students, counselors, occupational therapists, practitioners of creative writing, and individuals interested in alternative therapies.
Internet gives a new dimension to creative writing, a traditional resource in education. The use of blogs as a new electronic resource of creative writing offers a readable fusion of practical ideas and reports on previous thinking on the subject. Writing down thoughts and feelings in the form of a journal or a letter using electronic materials may help students in their writing skills, and enhance the creation of a virtual community of support. There is an increased growth of electronic materials that show how this practice may provide practical suggestions for beginning to write and for developing writing further, also with therapeutical purposes.
Creative writing describes routes to understanding oneself, and the other. Our aim in this paper is to show how this tool is being used by the actors of health care and education, and how that experience may be applied in electronic educational contexts at all levels.