A Turning Point
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A Turning Point

18 Jan A Turning Point

Posted at 18:19h in Community Organizing, Culture, Human Development, Performance Movement, Psychology of Becoming, Psychotherapy, Social Therapeutics, Social Therapy by

January 18, 2011

If you need a pick-me-up today, something to inspire you, maybe this will do the trick:

Ishita Sanyal is founder of the Calcutta-based grassroots mental health group, Turning Point, and an avid promoter and proselytizer on behalf of a social therapeutic approach to mental health. On a subcontinent where there are only 600 practicing clinical psychologists and a devastating shortage of mental health services, Ishita advocates for a group/community-based, performance therapeutic practice everywhere she goes. She recently registered “Social Therapy India” as the official organizational platform in India.

Ishita has introduced therapy games with mothers and children struggling with rigid social roles and rules. Mothers tend to watch others play, for example, but not play themselves. Performance helps them take the state, she reports. And in her group therapy work at Turning Point, Ishita reports how the improv work has helped her “discover new capacities of the clients, simultaneously as they discover new capacities in themselves.” She describes, for example, a young woman who rarely spoke with others.  “As she struggled to perform in the dramatic play,” says Ishita, “and as the group showed its appreciation by enthusiastically applauding, there was a change in her performance… After some time, she began for the first time to speak with other group members.”

Alvaader Frazier, Esq.

Read about more people like Ishita, graduates of a unique program focusing on the performance of community, in

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2 Comments
  • Monex
    Posted at 14:07h, 31 January

    The drama activities are partly therapeutic partly educational and allow the young.people to express themselves through storytelling and plays…..Therapy Group. Svetlana reports that she has been touched by the subtle changes in the students — how much they accepted the local culture and grew as a group.She led a team of 80 teenagers representing schools across Serbia who were part of a multi-national student project to create a board game called Human Rights Sunrise.

  • Ceci
    Posted at 20:45h, 18 January

    this is so inspiring… thank you for sharing what’s going on with performance around the world!

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