Art Therapy Client Groups
Art Therapu is being applied worldwide to an extense variety of client groups. In this section you can view various articles on different applications of Art Therapy. These articles are protected by copyright law and we ask you not to use them without proper citation.
Art Therapy with Children and Adolescents
Art Therapy in Mental Health (Adults)
Art Therapy in Palliative Care
Art Therapy and Learning Disabilities
Art Therapy in Prisons
Art Therapy in Special Needs Education
Art Therapy and Parkinson's Disease
Art Therapy and Mental Disorders
Art Therapy with Children and Adolescents
Carles Ramos i Portas
Coord. MA Art Therapy UB, DIR. Metáfora
ramos@metafora.org
In Art Therapy the theapist's work is similar to that a mother with her baby: attending to the physical and emotional needs of her child, understanding and responding well enough to his or her non-verbal messages as well as facilitating the learning of new and more elaborate forms of communication. Psychotherapy through the means of art is particularly suited to children as it uses a form of communication familiar to them and much more within their reach than spoken language. In the process of creating and manipulating an image or art object children express both literally and symbolically their hopes and fears, telling us what matters to them, what causes them worry and what excites them.
Art Therapy is used wirh children and adolescents in group or individual sessions, or in conjunction with family members. It is practiced in a wide variety of institutions: mainstream and special needs schools, hospitals and children's clinics, young offenders centres, mental health clinics, etc.
Art Therapy groups are particularly useful in helping lonely, excessively shy or agressive children to interact better with their peers. Through art play the Art Therapist helps to balance the forces within the group, transforming “acting out” into other safer and more effective forms of expression, and helping the child to share rather than compete.
Art Therapy sessions with the family are recommended where problems affecting the child originate in a disfunction of the nuclear family, which, for whatever reason, can't be corrected attending to the members of the family individually. Family Art Therapy sessions give the Art Therapist the opportunity to see the family interacting in the here and now. Such sessions afford the family the possibility of playing together and serve to correct unhelpful behaviour patterns at the moment in which they arise. Parents learn to see that not everything which the adult says to the child is actually communicated, while also discovering what the child's play tells us about his or her inner world and how he or she processes the reality of their environment.
Individual sessions are appropriate for children requiring special attention; children with psychotic disorders, children suffering some form of mental deficiency, or simply children who have lived through or are going through a traumatic period in their lives (illness or death of a relative, domestic violence, some form of abuse, the process of divorce, birth of a new sibling, etc.). Individual sessions are also suited to treating disorders likely to cause the child shame or embarassment, such as eneuresis, eating disorders, excessive parental dependence, inappropriate sexual conduct, etc.
Carles Ramos i Portas
Coord. MA Art Therapy UB,
Dir. Metáfora
ramos@metafora.org
Art Therapy is used in both the assessment and treatment of mental disorders in the adult population. There is a wide spectrum of psychopathologies treatable by Art Therapy, from psychosis to neurosis, personality disorders, drug dependency, depressions and eating disorders, etc. Patients can use images to distance themselves from their emotional conflicts and, as in a mirror, see their own reflection safely. Whether Art Therapy is the best form of therapy to be used will depend not so much on the pathology as on the specific circumstances of each patient, their level of disturbance, their ability to form significant relationships, their ability to reflect and express their own emotions and, of course, the willingness of the patient to undergo a therapeutic process in which creating images is an important factor. Art Psychotherapy, also known as Art Therapy, is practiced in individual and group sessions. Treatments can be short- or long-term, depending on whether the work is focused on containment, conflict or intrapsychic exploration.
The versatility of Art Therapy means that it can be carried out in various care settings. In the In-patient Unit it aims at counteracting the adverse emotional effects of a hospital admission, reducing the level of anxiety at the same time as facilitating communication among patients and between patients and the clinical staff. Once outside the hospital the possibilities of Art Therapy multiply. In Community Care it can be used by the patient and medical team as a means of exploring the causes which led to the crisis, thus preventing a recurrence and helping the patient to find alternative means to express their conflicts. In Day Centres, Art Therapy proves useful in stimulating and improving patients' interpersonal relationships, as well as enablling a creative form of reflection in each patient on their personal situation.
In the treatment of less severe psychopathologies with patients who distance themselves from their feelings, intellectualising their conflicts, Art Therapy can help the patient to establish contact with their emotions without endangering their defensive strategies.
While the metaphorical images used in spoken language are not lasting, visual images retain their emotional charge and communicative power even after their creation. This allows the Art Therapist to wait for the appropriate moment to return to an image which alludes to a particular conflict, i.e. when the patient is ready to confront it, and not before.
Carles Ramos i Portas
Coord. MA Art Therapy UB
Dir. Metáfora
ramos@metafora.org
Art Therapy is very effective in the field of palliative care. In the United States , Great Britain and now also Spain , it is used in hospitals treating cancer patients and those with HIV/AIDS, Family Care Centres, hospices and rehabilitation centres. In Art Therapy patients have the opportunity to communícate their worries without having to resort to words. Art activity can help people to tackle their problems with greater clarity.
Art Therapy in palliative care is offered to patients in different ways, whether at the hospital bedside or at home. The art-making could be drawing or painting, collage, cut-outs, reading or writing poetry, etc. It is by no means necessary that the person receiving this type of service has experience in the use of artistic materials. On the contrary, discovering a creative experience is not just pleasurable, but illuminating, In many ways, and especially in such difficult or painful circumstances Art Therapy can bring forth an immediate palliative effect.
With the opportunity to create patients find a way to express and reflect on the powerful feelings which are to be expected when suffering a terminal illness. These feelings, which are difficult enough as it is to put into words, are often hidden by patients, for fear of harming friends and family. Hospitalisation or medical treatment can awaken difficult feelings in the patient around excessive dependence, powelessness in the face of illness, loneliness, anger, despair etc. At the other extreme, when close to death, feelings such as gratitude, tenderness or appreciation often appear which are also difficult to articulate verbally. The Art Therapist in palliative work is an impartial companion, someone who offers his or her knowledge and experience to lend emotional support to patients in what is doubtlesss the most critical moment of their lives. Exploring the creativity latent within us not only allows the dicovery of our own inner strength but also enriches our lives with the start of something new at a moment when endings are in the fore.
In this area psychotherapy through art is not only carried out with the person who has the illness. In many centres and clinics for the terminally ill the Art Therapist also works with the family. This can be done working jointly with family and patient in the hospital, or seperately with the most vulnerable members of the family, both during the illness and after death, in the grieving process.
Carles Ramos i Portas
Coord. MA Art Therapy UB
Dir. Metáfora
ramos@metafora.org
A proper understanding of the inner world of people with learning difficulties highlights the fact that alternative types of action can reach objectives more easily. Programmes of behavioural modification or activities directed towards acquisition of motor or social skills can be seen as benefitial to a greater or lesser extent if at the same time the emotional needs of the patient are properly addressed. Art Therapy provides the psycho-pedagogical team with the necessary means of approaching the user's problems where language restrictions would otherwise make it impossible to access his or her emotional world. Art Therapy is distinguished from a plastic workshop in that it is neither an educational nor occupational activity. In Art Therapy the production of more or less decorative objects is not as important as the process of artistic creation. In this process, together with cognitive and motor skills, other potentials of the individual unfold which do not depend on his or her disability . The ability to appréciate and to express emotion, enjoyment, the internalisation of behaviour or the re-establishment of emotional balance: Recognishing these abiities and helping to realise them helps to improve the quality of life of the user of Art Therapy.
The non-threatenning nature of artistic activity allows the user to come closer to their therapist without experiencing intollerable levels of anxiety. The undirected activity which characterises this form of treatment enables the participation of those who are unable to participate in other activities.
The user of Art Therapy does not have to possess artistic abilities of any kind, not even the most basic. To make a line on a piece of paper or a fingerprint on a piece of clay is enough to begin to establish a process of work in which, at a pace which suits, the patient has the necessary space to begin to express his or her emotions and conflicts in a safe manner. The containing capacity of images made in the presence of an Art Therapy professional allows the emergence of unbearable feelings, be they dangerous or forbidden…feelings which without finding an outlet would remain locked inside and quite possibly unconsciously find alternative means of expression which are less desireable than scrawls on a piece of paper or finger-prints in clay.
The psycotherapist using art has been educated to understand the complexities of non-verbal languages, and his or her skill in decodifying visual expression in particular can be of great use to the psychopedagogical team to aid a better understanding of the internal reality of the user, thus optimising the beneficial effects of the therapeutic and educational resources of the centre.
Carles Ramos i Portas
Coord. MA Art Therapy UB
Dir. Metáfora
ramos@metafora.org
It is not so important in Art Therapy to achieve an aesthetic end product as it is to help the inmate reflect on himself. This occurs with the art-making acting as an intermediary facilitator in the communication and exploration of feelings. Prison is a paradoxical place, oppressing and denying feelings while at the same time awakening and exacerbating them with considerable force; anger is ignited like a bonfire while at the very heart of the flames is often hidden the most touching tenderness. The task of the Art Therapist is to help the inmate to reconcile these two forces.
There are many psychological factors which the inmate has to confront. The first of these, obviously, is the lack of freedom, but there is also the fact of being caught in a hostile and threatening environment in which the need to defend oneself and the threat of punishment coexist. The inmate lives far from his or her loved-ones, whom he sees, if he sees them at all, against the clock, and with every visit necesitating a new farewell.
The way in which the inmate relives his own crime, as a fact which has to be confronted, will determine to a great extent whether he will go on to reoffend. A framework of contradictory emotions has the inmate imprisoned much more effectively than the prison walls themselves. In order to reach rehabilitation, the inmate must first leave the spiral of victim-abuser, blame-punishment in which he or she is trapped. Only if they reach this goal will they be able to face their own guilt, empathise with their victim's pain, and take responsibility for their actions. The Art Therapist accompanies the inmarte in the difficult task of putting his or her life in order. The art objects produced in Art Therapy sessions take on a vital importance in the personal development of the inmate; each image representing a a step on the path of self-rediscovery.
Gabriela Portas , Michèle Le Pape and Heleen Leper
MA Art Therapy UB
School plays a fundamental role in the emotional development of children and adolecents, as well as in their social integration. School Art Therapy offers an intermediary space in which it is possible to strengthen emotional and psychological aspects of the pupil which effect his or her learning process as much as his or her behaviour and self-development. Art Therapy is especially suited to work with children because of using a form of communication which is more accessible to them than spoken language. Art materials offer the child a more tangible and spontaneous means of expression for exploring his or her needs, emotions, fantasies, wishes, conflicts and difficulties. In children and adolecents in special needs education this alternative form of expression can be particularly valuable as there are frequently already difficulties in verbal communication.
Enriching the pupil's world with other channels of communication can help to negate expression though disruptive or agreesive behaviour as well as experiences of shyness and isolation. Artistic activity enables connections to be formed between behaviour and symbolic language. Art Therapy also offers these children and adolecents a space where they can experiment fully with their own resources and abilities in order to solve problems, stimulate spontaneity, authenticity and imagination. This helps them then to gain more self-confidence and self-esteem, a particularly important achievement for children who may feel vulnerable or feel that they cannot control important aspects of their lives. Moreover, the development of creativity reinforces cognitive development as (ya que) creative and intellectual abilities are interrelated. In Art Therapy this stimulation is carried out in a playful and non-directed manner, favouring the autonomy of the child in his or her own learning process. The manipulation of images or the creation of a symbolic work in Art Therapy facilitates the expression of disturbing emotions which are difficult to comminicate directly. In the case of disabled children, this difficulty can be excacerbated by their condition of dependency. The creative act channels tensions and feelings of frustration while the created object for its part contains and can reveal these difficult emotions in a non-threatenning manner. Art Therapy helps to support this, giving meaning and transformation . The exploration of emotions within Art Therapy then has repercussions in the life of the child or adolescent in the way in which they relate to others and to themselves. Creative work within a safe therapeutic context also allows the testing and establlishing of boundaries. The experience of boundaries and containment can help the child or adolecent safely to explore emotions or overwhelming feelings. In the work or the creative process these emotions or other blurry images and thoughts, take on form, rendering them controllable for the child or adolescent. This whole process, inherent in creative work, has repercussions in the development of his or her identity. In children and adolescents with autism or psychosis a direct approach with the therapist can be distressing.
Art Therapy, being mediated though objects and art materials helps the child or adolescent to relate in a less threatenning form. Moreover, the exploration and manipulation of various materials stimulates the child to form a more integrated sense of physicality and to create a more extensive world of meanings. With children and adolecents with a diagnoisis of psychosis it also helps in distinguishing between fantasy and reality. In conclusion, Art Therapy allows children and adolescents with disabilities the opportunity to feel joy and pleasure in the creative act, feelings which are usually denied them. They are also offerered the ability to feel independent, to be able to make decisions and to feel in control of their creartive process, giving them the opportunity to be active agents in their own development.
Sally Schofield
MA Art Therapy UB
Published in Catparkinson , Rev. Associació Catalana per al Parkinson (the Catalan Parkinson's Disease Association), January-March 2007, Nº3
In life, unforseen difficulties arise which we have to confront and find a way of overcoming. Someimes, the difficulty is irreversible, as when one is diagnoised with a degenerative, incurrable illness like Parkinson's Disease. We can't change the disagnosis, but we can look for means to live with it. Art Therapy is proven to be a therapeautic intervention suited to confronting this illness.
Parkinson's Dissease
Parkinson's Disease is an illness of the Central Nervous System caused by a deficit in the neurotransmitter Dopamine, vital in the coordination of movements and the balance of the human body. This deficit impedes the smooth transmission of messages in the Central Nervous System. Some of the most common symptoms are tremors, muscular rigidity, the slowing down of movement (automatic movements such as blinking and swallowing, etc. just as much as voluntary movements) postural anomolies and reduced mobility . A person affected with Parkinson's Disease can, for example, have the intention to walk without their body actually responding. This imposes huge frustration on the individual. Dimentia is not a definitive symptom of Parkinson's Disease, although it can be more prevelant in advanced stages of the disease. However, from the onset of the illness, there can be certain cognitive changes (difficulties organising things, planning, slowness of thought, problems of concentration).
There are various groups of medicines useful in the treatment of Parkinson's Disease which allow us to control the main symptoms well. Despite this, to the outside observer Parkinson's disease can seem capricous due to the changes in the affect of the medicines throughout the day. This fact means that limitations can be more or less evident depending on the momentin question. To preserve his or her autonomy, the patient must carry out for themselves all actions they can. Carrying out any activity may require more time than usual, but the patient must achieve an adaptation to his or her new rhythm and must be in a position to ask for and receive help whenever it is really necessary. Pharmaceuticals alleviate the symptoms of the illness, which, joined to an acceptance and adaptation to the illness on the part of the patient, usually means that the person continues to live a full life, despite the limitations. Parkinson's Disease does not shorten life expectancy. However, to manage to live with the illness to the maximum quality of life it is adviseable that the person follows an integrated treatment, as much pharmacologocal as non-pharmecological. There is a range of recommendable complementary therapies for this: Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Hydrotherapy, Logotherapy . Music Therapy, Psychotherapy and Art Therapy. The result will be that the person maintains an active life, healthy both physically and emotionally.
Parkinson's disease normally appears in people between 50 and 65 years of age, and affects both sexes equally. The illness cannpt be considered in isolation, and it must be taken into account that in this age group the individual suffers other changes in his or her life, possibly having to consider the end of their working life. This feeling of loss of ability to carry out work can signify a stage which obliges one to reorganise one's life. These days post-modern society leaves no space for the elder. A set of technological changes has been produced in such a short period of time that the elder has been left in a position of inferiority and marginalisation for his or her difficulty in integrating into the world of the future. Owing to this lack of an accepted role certain questions arise which are difficult to resolve, to which we cannot offer immediate answers, and which could be treated in a therapeautic setting .
Art Therapy - methodology
Art Therapy is a form of therapeutic intervention within the psychodynamic orientation which uses artisitic languages as a means of expression. The use of art in this context provides us with a means of non-verbal communication through which the individual has the chance to express themselves consciously as well as unconsciously. In Art Therapy the creative process and the resulting art object form a very important third element in the therapeutic relationship, which allows the individual to capture their set of emotions, feelings and thoughts through the observations of the therapist on the created work as well as through the intrinsic meaning of the work unmediated in words. The usual method used is non-directive so that the patient can express themselves freely, and thus the themes which are worked through are guided by the particular needs of each individual or group. Art Therapy provides people affected by Parkinson's Disease with a tool to reduce the anxiety felt towards the illness and a way of adapting to the changes imposed by ageing, with the goal that they continue to feel autonomous, full and able to live with a consciousness of their distressing situation accompanied by a greater serenity.
The Goals of Art Therapy with People Affected by Parkinson's Disease:
• To develop the creativity, sponteneity and potential of each person, with the aim of recovering the value of their individuality.
• To expore his or her abilities in the creative process to help successful adaptation to the limitations on movement caused by the illness.
• To promote fundamental cognitive functions such as concentration, memory, executive functions and coordination, which are often affected by the illness.
• To provide a place to recover liberty in decision making, experimentation and the trying out of ideas in the creative process, thus enhancing the capacity of self-determination .
• To stimulate relaxation and the search for harmony.
• To provide a safe and pleasant space in which it is possible to express and share subjects which are often difficult to articulate and to confront, (pain, loss, death, dependency) and to help the working through and acceptance of these themes.
• To support an improvement in the patient's communication with themselves and others though the creative process and participation and involvement in the group or individual therapeutic process.
To summarise, Art Therapy contributes to health improvement, leading the mind to difficerent levels where the visual prevails over the logical, and connecting the individual with their creativity, something very important for someone who has to adapt to set limitations and a new situation as the result of an illness like Parkinson's Disease.
The realisation of this therapeutic process can come to mean a way of accessing expression and exploration helping to articulate difficult feelings and enabling a path to emotional wellbeing .,
Pamela Reyes
Deg Psychology Univ of Santiago,
MA Art Therapy UB Chile
artepamela@yahoo.com
At the beginning of the twentieth century the arts focus their attention on the subjectivity of the artist; Psychoanalysis arises and with it the idea of the unconscious; modern atists reflect the inner-world in their images and not just the appearance of the outer-world. The value which Expressionism, as an aesthetic current, gives to self-expression and the inner-world of the artist and the re-valuing of the creativity of the mentally ill made in these modern aesthetic currents, brings psychiatry and art closer, marking a primary reference point for the development of Art Therapy in the field of mental heath. After the Second World War various mental health institutions and professions are faced which the challenge of treating large populations of people, harmed and traumatised by the effects of a devastating war. These facts mark the beginning of the search for new therapeutic practices which allow the integrated treatment and rehabilitation of these people. New therapeutic techniques and methods arise, such as group therapies, Occupational Therapy and arts therapies. In other words, the first experiences of Art Therapy come out of art teaching practices in psychiatric hospitals.
Artists are placed within hospitals and begín by helping various patients to occupy their free time with recreative group activities centred in producing art objects. However, progressively, as ideas of psychotherapy and treatment develop in the mental health sciences, artists or art teachers come to recognise in artistic practice not only a means of recreation, but also a form of experience which allows the opening up of a set of affective motivational and social functions among various groups of patients. In this sense, the development of Art Therapy moves from the first practises based in art workshops with patients to the current situation in which the various modalities of Art Therapy include distinct individual and group psychotherapeutic strategies. The areas which, in the field of mental health bring together the largest range of practices is, without doubt, the treatment and rehabilitation of severe metal traumas. Wood, C. (1997), explaining how the pioneering artist Adrian Hill worked with this population in psychiatric hospitals, points out that the work of Art Therapy has been present in the area of severe mental disorders in Great Britain since the beginnings of the profession in the years 1930 to 1950. He stresses, however, that Hill did not work with a severely psychotic population, although it was a poplulation whose members had some history of mental illness.
It is also important to note the impact of mental health politics and changes in psychiatric institutions as a challenge towards the development of various treatment modalities for a population with severe mental disorders. Some important changes come with the closure of the old psychiatric asylums and the implementation of a set of community care measures (day-care centres, therapeutic communities, day-centres, In-patient units, etc.). Wood, C. (1997) stresses that each of these contexts demands a different type of intervention in Art Therapy. Art Therapy placed within a set of psycho-social interventions in this kind of treatment can contribute to the strengething of the various ego-functions in vulnerable individuals, improve self-esteem, be a space which allows psychotic anxiety to be contained, and be a vehicle for interpersonal relations (Reyes, 2003). We currently find diverse Art Therapy practices in the field of mental health. In recent publications we find Art Therapy practiced in brief- or long-term format, with children, young people and adults, with addictions in a therapeutic community setting, in intensive care in open-workshop groups, with depressive individuals, eating disorders and severe personality disorders and psychosis, among others. Art Therapy is a particularly suitable alternative for those with difficulty verbalising their experiences and symbolising their internal world.
The use of Art Therapy allows the emergence of a less threatening bond which helps various individual and social therapeutic factors to emerge.