The paper aims to broaden the understanding of what in a drama/theatre practice can fulfil a function in psychiatry in working with patients with newly debuted psychosis.

Research on cultural expressions, including drama/theatre, provides evidence of positive effects on health, including mental illness. Patients with different diagnoses (e.g. mental illness) who participate in drama/theatre activities express feelings of meaning and hope when their stories are enacted and sometimes even meet an audience. In these contexts, the participants are treated as people with resources and not as patients, and it is an artistically knowledgeable leader who leads the work, not a therapist or nurse (e.g. the WHO report, 2019).

Previous research mentions hardly any specific drama/theatre conventions in work with drama/theatre aside from role-taking, where alternative ways of being can be tried, and that a dramaturgical understanding of the self can enable us to create new images of ourselves. In previous research, there was no clear participant perspective when drama/theatre was used as a method in anti-stigma work. Nor have we found research in which patients and care staff participate on the same terms as drama/theatre group participants.

This study focuses on what drama/theatre methods could lead to positive self-esteem and anti-stigma development. Which specific artistic tools are distinguished, and which nuances and qualities are made visible and specified in the interaction between participants and drama educators/theatre directors, which previous studies have not focused on to any great extent?

This research study is carried out at a daycare clinic where patients with newly developed psychosis can choose to participate in a drama/theatre group once a week. The study extends over a year. As a participating observer, the researcher has joined the drama/theatre work as one of the participants in two different groups. A beginner group mainly with drama work and group establishment and a continuation group with more performance focus. In addition, interviews were conducted with participants, the drama/theatre director and care staff who also participated in the drama/theatre work as participants. The groups continued their work during the covid 19 period, and the work was partly carried out in snow and rain.

The preliminary results are elucidated with the help of both drama/theatre theory, activity theory and relational theory to be able to describe and understand what it is the theatre practitioner is trying to achieve with his actions in relation to the participants' actions and how the participants' experiences interact with what happens. The result clarifies which drama/theatre tools are essential for increased self-esteem and reduced self-stigma and which nuances have been distinguished as particularly important in their use.

The most important preliminary conclusion so far is how the drama/theatre practitioner uses his solid knowledge of drama/theatre tools and methods in a, experienced by the participants, professional but unpretentious way. However, it is essential how the drama/theatre practitioner, in joint action with the participants, takes them into the unknown and the absurd and becomes a role model. To do crazy things does not mean that one is crazy but brave!