Psychodrama and empowerment in facing violence and death: Social settings beyond psychotherapy

Psychodrama interventions leverage creativity and spontaneity to improve the well-being of people who suffer by exploiting their still unexpressed, or even blocked, potential resources. Psychodramatic techniques can be successfully used outside the therapeutic setting, allowing people to explore and re-elaborate real life-experiences enhancing self-awareness, personal empowerment and positive relationships. In this chapter, the use of psychodrama in non-therapeutic contexts of intervention projects close to the authors will be described. The non-therapeutic settings are reported as follows: a) enhancing women's self-efficacy and autonomy to contrast gender-based violence; b) promotion of personal well-being redefinition in prisons or in therapeutic communities; c) death education projects to face death and the elaboration of loss. The use of psychodrama in these intervention projects in non-thrapeutic settings brought significant positive changes in the participants, enhancing psychological well-being. The results obtained can open an international debate on the effectiveness of psychodrama for personal empowerment.