The Sheffield Carers’ Voices Project: Was It Therapeutic?

In this chapter, Shea explores the experience of digital storytelling with participants in the Sheffield Carers’ Voices project in June 2009. He examines how the process affected the seven storytellers at the time and subsequently. Storytellers were interviewed nine months after the workshop. Using a mixed method of disparate psychological approaches, including a constructivist perspective and narrative psychology, five themes were identified, which form a narrative: the participants wanted to produce a digital story so that others could learn from their difficult experiences; revisiting these experiences in the workshop was emotionally hard, but the context was supportive; and the storytelling process enabled them to positively reframe these difficult experiences, which has subsequently had a positive impact on their mental health.