ACQ_Vol_11_no_3_2009

Mental health

Art therapy in mental health practice Application in a multidisciplinary day program for young people with severe mental health problems Sandra Drabant, Maggie Wilson, and Robert King

This paper examines the role of art therapists in a multidisciplinary team providing services in a day program for children and adolescents with severe mental health problems. Two dimensions of the art therapy role are examined. The first is the use of art therapy in a multidisciplinary group intervention. The second is the use of art therapy in the case management role that integrates services for individual clients. The specific contribution and value of art therapy with this client group and in this treatment setting is discussed. W hile writings from psychiatrists about the artwork of their clients date back over 100 years, the field of art therapy has formally developed only since the 1940s. Over a period of nearly 70 years, art therapy has developed from an adjunct to psychoanalytic therapies to a form of intervention that can be used in partnership with a wide range of therapies, and a stand-alone intervention (Borowsky-Junge & Pateracki-Asawa, 1994). It can be used in both individual and group work (Liebmann 2004; Malchiodi 2007; Waller 1993). It has also found application with problems and in settings outside the field of mental health. These include but are not limited to children and adolescents in schools, physically ill and dying children, bereaved children, people with developmental delays, and immigrants (Wadeson, 2000). Art therapists were initially resistant to evaluation using standard scientific procedures but have more recently recognised the importance both of better understanding the processes by which engagement in art activity promotes recovery and of establishing an evidence based for effectiveness (Bar-Sela, Atid, Danos, Gabay, & Epelbaum, 2007; Eitel, Szkura, Pokorny, & von Wietersheim; Rao et al., 2009).While there remains a paucity of high-quality studies (Ruddy & Milnes, 2005), there is encouraging evidence that participation in art therapy enhances well-being as measured by standardised instruments (Oster et al, 2006; Svensk et al., 2009). Art therapy has been recognised as having particular value in work with clients who have difficulty expressing themselves verbally, such as refugees, children, and individuals with specific disabilities (Rousseau & Heusch 2000; Shearer 1997; Waller, 2006). In a child and youth

mental health setting, art making can contribute to engagement, assessment, intervention, and treatment as part of the recovery plan. Symbolic or visual language is often central to the way children and teens express themselves and they are often more at ease with this medium than with answering questions. Contemporary child and youth mental health services typically employ a multidisciplinary team and a case management model of service delivery. There are opportunities for the art therapist to contribute both as a case manager and as part of a therapy team. In this paper, we describe and discuss the role of art therapy in the treatment of children and adolescents with severe mental health problems, having reference both to specialist therapeutic roles of art therapists and to the role of the art therapist as a case manager. The Mater CYMHS Day Program Mater’s CYMHS Day Program serves young people aged 6 to 18 living with a mental illness and their families. The day program treatment provides an intensive therapeutic milieu throughout the day for young people who have a range of diagnoses. The target group is young people who need more intensive treatment than can be provided in a community service but who do not require full inpatient care. The young people involved in treatment attend on a daily basis for one or more school terms and participate in individual, group, and family therapies as well as in a school program. Each client is allocated a case manager who may be any member of the team, including the art therapist. The case manager builds a strong therapeutic relationship with the young person and also has the responsibility of coordinating treatment. Although each young person involved in the program has a designated case manager, typically she or he will work closely with several members of the multidisciplinary team. The art therapist in multidisciplinary psychotherapy: the Compass group “Compass” is a group developed by the art therapist and psychologist for the adolescent cohort at the Mater CYMHS Day Program. This group was designed to combine mindfulness techniques (King, 2006; Monti et al., 2006) and art therapy to address the needs of the young people attending the program at the time. The overall purpose of the group was to provide a safe space for the young people to identify and express their feelings, both visually and verbally, and to develop a better understanding of the connection

Keywords ART THERAPY

This article has been peer- reviewed MENTAL HEALTH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Sandra Drabant (top), Maggie Wilson (centre), and Robert King

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ACQ Volume 11, Number 3 2009

ACQ uiring knowledge in speech, language and hearing