Creating Possibility Through Film: Vignesh Vyas and Therapeutic Filmmaking
What can making a film offer someone who is trying to imagine a different future?
For occupational therapist and filmmaker Vignesh Vyas, the question connects creative practice with everyday participation. His work brings filmmaking into health and social care, creating opportunities for people to collaborate, express themselves, and work toward meaningful goals. His background spans occupational therapy and film production.
Vyas brought this perspective to TEDxLeith. The event description frames his talk around a possibility: filmmaking can help people explore who they might become, as well as reflect on their past. A project may matter deeply even when its reach begins with one person’s experience.
The storytelling power of film | Vignesh Vyas | TEDxLeith.
TED's accompanying notice reminds viewers that this talk reflects the speaker's personal views and experience, and that anyone seeking help with mental health should consult a qualified professional.
Filmmaking as participation
What interests me about Vyas’s approach is the attention he gives to making something together.
His practice emphasizes shared roles, collaboration, and identifying goals through filmmaking. He also describes co-producing films with staff and service users to explore experiences and challenges within care settings. These are features of a creative process, not evidence, on their own, of a clinical outcome.
AI-generated editorial illustration for YDSP; not a documentary image of Vignesh Vyas or his work.
That process raises a question for me: what happens during the work of making a film, before an audience ever sees the finished piece?
Developing a scene may create an opportunity to make choices. Working with others may involve listening, negotiating, and contributing. Taking on an unfamiliar role may let someone try an activity that has received little recognition elsewhere. These are possibilities worth examining carefully in practice and research. They are not guaranteed effects, and they will not mean the same thing to every participant.
The medium itself is not the therapist. A camera or film does not provide care by itself. The people, relationships, context, consent, and professional responsibilities around a project matter. We can make filmmaking more therapeutic without turning filmmaking into therapy. I offer that as a distinction about how creative work may be framed, not as a claim that it produces a clinical result.
A contribution to scholarship on growth
Vyas contributed the opening chapter, “Therapeutic Filmmaking for Posttraumatic Growth,” to the volume I edited, Post-Traumatic Growth and Film/Video-Based Therapy: Cultivating Resilience Through Storytelling and Media Psychology, published by Routledge.
The chapter draws on a UK-based case study concerning filmmaking with people with learning disabilities. The publisher’s abstract highlights teamwork, creative engagement, peer learning, and confidence-building. It presents filmmaking as a meaningful occupation and discusses how participants may engage with their own narratives. My description here is based on the publisher’s abstract and listing, not the full chapter text.
AI-generated editorial illustration for YDSP; not a documentary image of Vignesh Vyas or his work.
I value approaches that make room for a person’s agency. In my view, creative work should allow uncertainty, unfinished stories, and different meanings of progress. Someone may value participating, forming a connection, or completing a small part of a project without having to present their experience as an uplifting transformation. That perspective is important to the wider conversation about storytelling and post-traumatic growth scholarship.
A brief personal clarification
Vignesh kindly acknowledged my work during his talk, although he mistakenly referred to me as 'Jacob Cohen.' He later acknowledged the mistake when we spoke by phone. For clarity, I am Dr. Joshua L. Cohen, a media psychologist and clinically trained researcher, and the editor of the volume featuring his chapter. I appreciate his recognition and take the mix-up in good spirit.
Continuing the conversation
Vyas’s work invites us to consider what people can discover through creating together. A film project can provide a reason to gather, a chance to contribute, or a way to explore a possibility that has been difficult to put into words. Those possibilities deserve attention without turning them into promises about what filmmaking will accomplish.
Vyas is an Occupational Therapist and Video Strategist with master’s degrees in occupational therapy and film production. His listed honors include a Highly Commendable Project at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards and a Behind the Scenes Champion award at the InsideOut Awards. Readers can learn more about Vyas and his work, visit the companion page about his chapter, or review the Routledge volume.
Dr. Cohen's current coaching, consulting, and educational services are nonclinical and do not constitute psychotherapy, psychological treatment, or a substitute for care from a licensed mental-health professional.