Feeling versus understanding: lived-experience insights into perceived mechanisms of change of creative arts and psychomotor therapies versus verbal therapeutic approaches.

Introduction: In mental health care, there is growing interest in embodied and experiential approaches such as creative arts and psychomotor therapies (CAPTs), which actively engage emotions and bodily experience in treatment. At the same time, service users' perspectives are increasingly recognized as an important source of knowledge within evidence-based practice. This study investigated how people with lived experience perceive CAPTs in relation to verbal therapeutic approaches. Methods: A qualitative survey among people with lived experience (n = 543) examined perceived helpfulness of CAPTs and verbal approaches, as well as experienced differences between them. Results: Findings indicate that CAPTs and verbal therapies are viewed as complementary. CAPTs are described as active and experiential, particularly helpful for connecting with emotions and increasing bodily awareness, whereas verbal therapies are seen as primarily verbal and cognitive, especially helpful for gaining insight into problems and fostering a sense of being heard and understood. Discussion: These results underline the importance of integrating emotional and bodily awareness into therapy and suggest that combining embodied and verbal approaches may address complementary aspects of therapeutic change for people with mental health difficulties.