Understanding Creative Thinking to Support Positive Mental Health
Use divergent thinking to unlock new and useful solutions for managing mental health.
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Linus Pauling
Mental health is a common struggle for many teens and a scary challenge to navigate for caretakers. As someone with mental health problems myself, I know how difficult it can be to think of alternative solutions to problems or ways to reframe my experiences. Remaining open to unique solutions and new paths to maintaining positive health can make an enormous difference. Knowing that there are other ways of living and thinking than what is currently being experienced can be freeing.
Neurodivergent individuals typically don’t think like everyone else, which forces them to discover creative (hopefully healthy) ways of adapting. Additionally, creativity is commonly a powerful healer for those with mental health problems.
One way to empower creativity and promote flexible thinking is to understand divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is coming up with many solutions to a problem, or many uses for an object. It’s similar to brainstorming. Divergent thinking is the foundation of all creative thinking — the idea that there are alternatives to what we are presented with, there can be more than one way of…
