This book is about redefining the value to health of creativity. Creativity derives from biological changes during human evolution as a tool that is needed for survival. The successful use of creativity generates feelings of pleasure and self-esteem that are beneficial to health. In particular, it can help depression. Current values do not give adequate importance to creativity, and the author challenges these values in this book.

The book contains contributed chapters on a theory of creativity as an innate capacity, the therapeutic benefits of creativity, factors that encourage or inhibit creativity and current research on these, and accounts of creativity both as individual projects and as groupwork.

Therese Schmid, Lecturer in Occupational Therapy, School of Health Sciences, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.