Colleen O’Connor ’14 is currently investigating creative writing as an affordable mental health intervention. As one of this year’s recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Re-Centering the Humanities grant, O’Connor regularly leads a creative writing group at the Addiction Recovery Center at Advocate BroMenn Medical Center in Normal, Illinois. 

Colleen O’Connor ’14

“For those with few resources, creative writing may provide a low-cost alternative for the management of persistent mental health disorders,” said O’Connor, who studied both Psychology and English-Writing at IWU. “I was interested in investigating how creative writing can best be used as a low-cost supplementary aid or replacement for traditional therapy techniques.” She hopes to eventually integrate successful creative writing-based therapeutic designs into the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery.

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