Dear Sheila
Sorry for not getting back in touch before now! Thanks for your
wonderful email which I found it to be one of the most useful received!
I would love to know more about the specific results of
the Experience of Art Therapy questionnaire.
All the best with your excellent work!
Roxana
Roxana Meechan
Arts Development Officer - Sutherland
The Highland Council
Education, Culture & Sport
Highland Council Offices
Main Street
Golspie
Sutherland
KW10 6RB
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: (01408) 635211
Fax: (01408) 633120
-----Original Message-----
From: Sheila Grandison [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 20 January 2004 23:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Health benefits of "Drawing"
Dear Roxana
I work as an Art Psychotherapist in acute psychiatry in the NHS,
currently
with adolescents and adults with severe communication problems who may
be
experiencing their first episode of psychosis, or who have histories of
psychosis. They are people who often are not able to engage in
meaningful
verbal communication with others, and for whom imagistic forms precede
the
capacity to put experience into thought and understanding.
Acute anxiety states, disturbed behavioural problems, chaotic
lifestyles,
etc., may also be in relation to disruptive social circumstances
(including
refugees); loss of cultural identity; absent parent(s) and any of the
abuses
i.e. physical, sexual and emotional. Where traumatised experience is
not
yet transformable into words (and indeed English may not be the first
language), expression is often reached in drawn images (using simple
materials such as coloured felt-tip pens) where, with the help of a
trained
art therapist, what has been experienced can be understood, made verbal
and
more tolerable. A drawn line can begin to give shape to the
unimaginable
storms of e.g traumatised loss or fear.
There is now a substantial - and growing - literature on art therapy,
but
for your purposes you may be interested in the results of service user
questionnaires, which repeatedly indicate that art therapy helps the
most
vulnerable to understand their life experiences and feelings better,
and
that the art materials made available to them through art therapy are
central to this process of communicating and engaging with others where
words on their own are inadequate.
Do get in touch if you would like to know more about the specific
results of
the Experience of Art Therapy questionnaire.
With very best wishes
Sheila Grandison-Barendt
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