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The Erasmus+ project „Death Education for Palliative Psychology“ (DE4PP) investigated the effects of teaching palliative psychology with psychodrama and art therapies as positive effects on students‘ attitudes towards life and death were suspected through the use of these forms of treatment. A total of five countries participated in this project funded by the European Commission (Austria, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Romania). In Austria, 34 students from the University of Klagenfurt completed the pilot course entitled „Palliative Psychology“ generated by the project partners. Course participants filled out psychological and satisfaction questionnaires at the beginning and end of the course to measure the impact of teaching palliative psychology with psychodrama and art therapies. Likewise, the research was conducted with a control group. In addition, six randomly chosen participants in the course participated in a focus group interview at the end, which included questions about their experience of the course, the impact of art therapy and psychodrama techniques, experiences of verbal and artistic processing of death anxiety, and the meaning of life and death, representation of death and associated feelings. The results showed that the processing of life and death had occurred in participants due to the course they had completed. As part of the course, creative arts and psychodrama were bridges to death. Filling out satisfaction questionnaires, photovoice assignments, role reversal, and visualizing a personal social atom were seen by students as particularly effective methods for self-reflection. Wieser, M. A., & Leitner, A. (2023). Impact of Teaching Palliative Psychology with Psychodrama and Arts Therapies on Psychology Students in Klagenfurt. Behavioral Sciences, 13(11), 931. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13110931 In the workshop, we will explore palliative psychodrama, and we can use English or German, depending on the participants. |