Using Crayons to Exorcise Katrina

September 17, 2007
By SHAILA DEWAN

Art Therapy – New York Times

Trinity Williams, a child displaced by Hurricane Katrina, works with Karla Leopold, an art therapist, above. At right, other work by children at a FEMA trailer park in Baker, La., shows that the trauma of the hurricane has influenced thoughts of home and safety.

BAKER, La., Sept. 16 — One of the most common images in children’s art is the house: a square, topped by a pointy roof, outfitted with doors and windows.

So Karla Leopold, an art therapist from California, was intrigued when she noticed that for many of the young victims of Hurricane Katrina, the house had morphed into a triangle.

“At first we thought it was a fluke, but we saw it repeatedly in children of all ages,” said Ms. Leopold, who with a team of therapists has made nine visits to Renaissance Village here, the largest trailer park for Katrina evacuees, to work with children. “Then we realized the internal schema of these children had changed. They weren’t drawing the house as a place of safety, they were drawing the roof.”

Countless articles and at least five major studies have focused on the lasting trauma experienced by Hurricane Katrina survivors, warning of anxiety, difficulty in school, even suicidal impulses. But few things illustrate the impact as effectively as the art that has come out of sessions under the large white tent that is the only community gathering spot at Renaissance Village, a gravel-covered former cow pasture with high truancy rates and little to occupy youngsters who do not know when, or if, they will return home. Even now the children’s drawings are populated by alligators, dead birds, helicopters and rescue boats. At a session in May one 8-year-old, Brittney Barbarin, drew a swimming pool full of squiggly black lines. Asked who was in the pool, she replied, “Snakes.”The drawings, photographs and sculptures, about 50 of which went on display Sunday at the New Orleans Museum of Art, are a good indicator of how children are coping, said Dr. Irwin Redlener, the co-founder of the Children’s Health Fund, which has provided mobile mental health clinics to some families along the Gulf Coast. The art also shows that the trauma did not end with the hurricane.
Continued here…

Without a trace

Their crime was called an act of ‘unparalleled barbarity’. Now the two boys who murdered James Bulger are men, their freedom and identities protected by the courts. So what has become of them?

By David James Smith Without a trace – Sunday Times – Times Online

(snip)He began art therapy, drawing faces with turned-down mouths and marks on the face, apparently re-creating the appearance of his victim. He was haunted by flashbacks of blood coming from James’s mouth. Venables told the art therapist she could sell the paintings for millions and she had to reassure him she would never do such a thing. He was acutely aware of his own notoriety and became hysterical, after the trial, when his and Thompson’s names became public knowledge for the first time. He said he feared becoming a new Myra Hindley, and spoke of his anxiety that people would break into Red Bank to attack him.

Malcolm Stevens saw correspondence from psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists across the world offering their help in treating the two boys, or asking to interview them for their own researches. These requests were refused, and the correspondence from the public – which was evenly split 50-50, between the kind, gift-laden letters and the unpleasant – was ignored. Stevens felt it could be distorting for Thompson and Venables to see any of it, especially the excess religious material reassuring the boys that Jesus loved them and forgave them. He could see how that might undermine their view of the seriousness of the offence.

Continued: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2271183_1,00.html

Mural depicts road to recovery at Sunrise House

New Jersey Herald

www.sunrisehouse.com.

Using the Arts to Tame Katrina’s Emotional Force

Using the Arts to Tame Katrina’s Emotional Force | Connect for Kids

Using the Arts to Tame Katrina’s Emotional Force

Published: June 12, 2006

by: Martha Pitts
[Final products of the Whole Schools/Dream Yard kite-building project take flight.] Final products of the Whole Schools/Dream Yard kite-building project take flight.

A high school sophomore in New Orleans takes a picture of the green mold covering the walls of her house and writes in her journal about the much-anticipated day she and her family can return home permanently.

A young boy from Pascagoula, Mississippi sits in an art center in Fairhope, Alabama during a “hurricane healing” workshop. He draws a picture of a face, colors it blue, and draws waves under the eyes.

And another young boy, one of many displaced children living in a trailer park in Baker, La. with their families, makes an ant out of pipe cleaners and tells a therapist the ant is scared of drowning.

In the nine months since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, many children have used art and other creative activities to express themselves and to cope with the traumatic events associated with the hurricane. The concept of art therapy rests on the idea that creative activities offer ways for children and young people to revisit a traumatic experience in ways that are healing. And in the aftermath of Katrina, there’s a whole cohort of kids who need ways to process terrible loss on a large scale.

Why Art Therapy?

“Because of its interdisciplinary qualities—art, psychology, child development, arts education—art therapy is uniquely positioned to assist children with trauma,” said Paige Asawa, therapist and co-author of the book A History of Art Therapy in the United States.

Asawa and several of her colleagues from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles have taken numerous trips to the Renaissance Village, a FEMA trailer park in Baker, La., to work with children displaced by Katrina.

And while Asawa has worked with both children and adults who’ve experienced different kinds of trauma—death in the family and witnessing violence, for example—she says the experience of Katrina was different.

“You can’t compare them,” Asawa said. “You’re talking about the displacement of hundreds of thousands of kids, and the trauma went for days, in some cases for weeks and months. Families were relocated and torn apart.”

Because the complexity of the disaster was incomprehensible to many of the children, art therapy has been especially beneficial, allowing the kids to express the inexpressible and to unlock hidden feelings.

Simply by re-telling a story, Asawa said, a child can be re-traumatized as he or she vividly remembers troubling events. However, if they have something else to do in the context of remembering—drawing, playing with clay, for example—they are less likely to become traumatized again.

Initially, Asawa and the other therapists provided art supplies to get the participants—ages 4 to 21—engaged in a creative activity. When they were ready to tell their stories, Asawa helped them do that through art.

“We sit with them, hear what they say, and take what they’re saying to a therapeutic level,” Asawa says. She explains that by asking questions about a piece, or encouraging the children to use a different art medium, the therapists help the children understand the emotions the artwork is expressing. Continued…

Art Therapy in the news May 2006

Art therapy is gaining acceptance by nation’s health care …
Detroit Free Press – United States
BY PATRICE M. JONES. Nancy O’Brien, who plays in hospitals to calm patients, also played at a recent Society for the Arts in Healthcare conference. …

Jacob’s Heart moving to Watsonville
Santa Cruz Sentinel – Santa Cruz,CA,USA
… And volunteers play an important part in the Art from the Heart program, a system of art therapy that differs slightly from the support group meetings. …

Reviving memories through art
Boston Globe – United States
… Art therapy cannot halt or reverse the progression of the degenerative brain disease, which gradually impairs the ability to think, remember, and communicate. …

Releasing pain through art
Greater Milwaukee Today – WI, USA
… The boy participated in the children’s art therapy program that runs twice a week at the shelter while his mother sat in on the women’s support group. …

Art Therapy
Louisville Courier-Journal – Louisville,KY,USA
By Diane Heilenman. The power of art to reduce anxiety and reflect nature’s healing forces was part of the notion behind a series …

Adult Day Care Holds Art Show
Jamestown Post Journal – Jamestown,NY,USA
… The Art and Older Adults project is an ongoing art therapy program that has been made possible by the collaborative funding that was provided by matching …

Brush with healing: Sympathetic to their fears, mural artist …
Pittsburgh Post Gazette – Pittsburgh,PA,USA
… themselves,” said Mrs. Goyak. She has a special motivation to do it. But the experts call it “art therapy.”. Nancy D. Rued, program …

Art liberates WVW’s Ashton
Wilkes Barre Times-Leader – Wilkes Barre,PA,USA
… The daughter of Margaret Barney and Daniel Ashton, she plans to become a psychologist and incorporate art therapy into her counseling. …