Missing & Health

Creative workshop: Body mapping, healing through art.

For families of missing people.

Missing & Health explore the profound impact of missing persons on families—an often-overlooked crisis that affects over 170,000 individuals annually in the UK alone, and over 10 million globally.

Using art and storytelling, the aim is to:

1. Raise Awareness: Highlight the emotional, psychological, and systemic consequences of disappearance on families.
2. Advocate for Change: Promote art-based trauma-informed training in medical, nursing, and counselling education to encourage inclusive, responsive policy in the NHS and beyond.
3. Provide Support: Offer creative workshops and community-building activities for those affected.

“When my mother, who had Alzheimer’s, went missing in France in 2013, this left lasting wounds that my family and I are still trying to heal. Now my research focuses on better understanding the experiences of families of missing people through the use of art and narrative. The aim is to shape better support systems by educating medical professionals about our experience and to improve the care provided to families whose loved ones have gone missing.” Pascale Waschnig, psychology doctoral researcher at the University of West London