This chapter explores how creative writing can form part of the rehabilitation of people with a serious or chronic illness. Based on the evaluation of an intervention project, Creative Writing Workshops, at the Univer sity of Southern Denmark, the chapter presents a model of how interventions based on facilitated creative writing can be effectuated and the signi ficance such an intervention can have for people with various health challenges. The chapter opens with an introduction to the concept of creative writing and discusses its significance in the context of health and its function as a method in narrative medicine. It then goes on to use a model for a writing workshop course to illustrate how the project's new writing workshops are being facilitated and enacted. This allows a presentation and discussion of the process undergone by participants during the course of a writing workshop, of examples of particular writing exercises, and of the significance of context to the creation of a safe space. Finally, suggestions are made as to possible mechanisms governing its effects. Against the background of the project's qualitative evaluation, the chapter concludes that creative writing in small groups with an experienced facilitator can be relevant to and have wide-ranging effects in rehabilitation, health promotion, palliation, and treatment.

The therapeutic and health-promoting effects of writing have been explored by a number of researchers (see, for example, Pennebaker, 1997; Lepore and Smyth, 2002; Bolton, 2008), but the particular means whereby writing exerts its effects on health remain unclear. This chapter addresses facilitated creative writing as a rehabilitation measure with particular focus on the working mechanisms governing the effects of writing. The results are based on the research project Kreative skriveværksteder for mennesker med kroniske lidelser [Writing Workshops for InterventionsPeople with Chronic Illness], which was part of the Human Health (2018) focus area financed by the University of Southern Denmark, but they also include results from previous research projects looking at writing workshops for people with chronic illness (Hellum, Jensen and Nielsen, 2017; Zwisler et al., 2017; Hansen et al., 2019; Tarp et al., 2019). The chapter presents a model of the writing work-shops, describing the workshops’ form and content and some of the features that can promote or prevent a positive outcome from the creative writing. We suggest that the model might be relevant in relation to rehabilitation, health promotion, palliative care, and treatment.