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Articles - Art Therapy
OAK LEAVES FAMILY SERVICE
COLUMN - AUGUST, 1999
My brother has been severely depressed for
the past year but is now taking medication and seeing a psychiatrist. His
doctor wants to include art therapy in his treatment, but we don't understand
how this can help him. Can you tell us how it works?
Art therapy is a type of psychotherapy that combines traditional verbal
("talk") psychotherapy with nonverbal communication through the creation
of artwork. Art therapy offers the individual an opportunity to express
emotions and explore intense or painful thoughts and feelings in a supportive
environment.
To learn more about art therapy, check
out these resources:
- American Art Therapy Association – 847/949-6064
- Illinois Art Therapy Association – 312/409-8330
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Both adults and children can benefit from art therapy. Children, unlike
most adults, often cannot easily express themselves verbally. Adults, on
the other hand, may use words to intellectualize and distance themselves
from their emotions. In art therapy, expression through words is secondary.
Art therapy enables the individual to break through barriers to self expression
through the use of simple art materials.
"When clients are speaking about art or creating art, different psychological
issues that have remained repressed easily surface in their work," explains
Angela Potaczek, M.A. an art therapist on staff at Family Service & Mental
Health Center of Oak Park & River Forest. Potaczek says the agency provides
regular art therapy group sessions for clients in its Transitional Learning
Center (TLC), an outpatient psychosocial day rehabilitation program for
recently hospitalized area residents, including those from Oak Park and
River Forest
Using art materials such as paints, crayons, paper and clay, clients are
encouraged to create a visual representation of their thoughts and feelings.
Since communicating through artwork is usually a less familiar form of communication
for most people, clients are less able to avoid exposing difficult issues.
Having less control over what they say through their art may enable clients
to get to the heart of their conflicts and obtain the help they need. The
art therapist gently guides the client in a discussion of his or her art,
providing avenues for communication while identifying feelings and blocks
to emotional expression.
Potaczek recalls one client who was experiencing physical and emotional
pain but had difficulty talking about what she was going through. Asked
to draw on paper how she was feeling, she sketched a face divided into different
colored sections of black, grey and red. Above the head she drew a grey
cloud with lightening strikes. When encouraged to talk about her drawing,
she said it showed how she felt her head would crack open from the headaches
she was experiencing from the overwhelming depression, anger and sadness
in her life. The cloud depicted the bad luck she felt that followed her
everywhere.
Potaczek urged the client to share the drawing with her psychiatrist. These
insights helped the psychiatrist to provide the client with appropriate
therapy and medication for her depression and headaches. The client continues
to use a sketch book to record her drawings and writings, a helpful tool
in her ongoing therapy and recovery.
Art therapy as a separate field developed simultaneously in England and
the United States in the 1930s. First used with psychiatric patients as
a means of expression for those who were often uncommunicative, art therapy
is now used in a wide variety of treatment situations to foster self-awareness,
develop social skills, resolve emotional conflicts, reduce anxiety and increase
self-esteem.
Art therapists provide individual, group and family therapy. They can work
together as a member of a treatment team in a hospital, school or residential
care facility, or provide private practice services to support the work
a client is doing with his or her therapist or counselor. Art therapists
work with clients dealing with a wide range of issues and conditions including
cancer, trauma, self-abuse, eating disorders, separation and loss, depression,
addictions, mental illness, and marriage and family problems.
Located at 120 S. Marion, Oak Park, Family Service & Mental Health Center
of Oak Park & River Forest is a not-for-profit social service and mental
health agency that provides counseling, psychiatric and prevention/education
programs to men, women, youth and families. To learn more about our programs
or to make an appointment, contact us at (708) 383-7500.
  
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