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Bonnie Harnden, MA, RDT

  • Associate Professor and practicum coordinator, Drama Therapy, Creative Arts Therapies

Research areas: Drama therapy, trauma, attachment, research-creation, performed autoethnography, psychoanalysis, ethnography, embodied knowledge, play therapy, family therapy, parenting, experimental theater, theater for social change, arts-based learning, risk factors/ protective factors, borderline personality disorder, child and youth care, suicide intervention, mental health, pedagogy

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Biography

Bonnie Harnden is a psychoanalyst, creative arts therapist, and couple and family therapist specializing in the intersection of talk therapy, drama therapy, somatic practices, and clinical research. At Concordia, she serves as a full Professor and is the founder and coordinator of the specialized Graduate Certificate in Play Therapy.

Her research focuses on translating complex clinical data into accessible, arts-based media to support mental health professionals on the front lines and examines the trauma that occurs in the space between us, specifically within the relational dynamics of caregivers and children. She is commited to exploring embodiment as a way of knowing and art as a way of teaching, often focusing on the neurobiology of awe and gratitude as essential tools for nervous system resilience and professional sustainability.

Publications

Selected publications / works of interest

  • Greenfield, B., Harnden, B. Previously Suicidal Adolescents: Predictors of Six-Month Outcome. (2008). Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 17(4): 197-201.
  • Harnden, B., Rosales, A., Greenfield, B. Outpatient art therapy with a suicidal adolescent female. (2004). The Arts in Psychotherapy. 31 (3); 165-180.
  • Harnden, B. (2008). Reverie on Becoming an Analyst. (2008). Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis. 16: 305-310.

Bonnie has also co-authored another publication during the 2008 calendar year on the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) data set while collaborating with Dr. Brian Greenfield in the Department of Psychiatry of McGill University Faculty of Medicine.  They will soon submit their findings concerning the four-year follow-up of that BPD cohort, which they conducted through funding from the Hogg Family Foundation ($165,000) and the Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation ($15,000), and for which Bonnie was a co-investigator.

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