From Andy Evans@21:1/5 to All on Mon Mar 20 02:59:49 2023
I've been involved in Performing Arts Medicine since the late 1980s in the UK. As a performance psychologist I was very active in BAPAM - The British Association of Performing Arts Medicine - which is very much alive and flourishing to this day. We're
very well organised in the UK, and also have Help Musicians UK which finds treatment and research. Plus we have a Masters degree in Performing Arts Medicine at University College London. This has been my vocation for the last 30 years, during which I was
also the careers advisor to the British ballet companies, seeing dancers at transition, and I also ran an MA course for a few years.
Performing Arts Medicine started in the 1980s and really took off globally in the 1990s, with a lot of international conferences. It was a fun time with lots of new research and media coverage. Today it's very established. Musicians can easily retrain to
be counsellors and therapists and offer a refreshing understanding of what life is like as a performer. Musicians make up most of the clientele. Actors less so - they like psychoanalysis. Dancers get injured and in the UK there's the "Healthier Dancer"
organisation which helps with this. We're very well organised here.