Using Art Therapy for Terrorist Rehabilitation?

I came across this article written by the well-known art therapist, Cathy Malchiodi, about art therapy being done in Saudi Arabia to assist in rehabilitating jihadists. The video that she references about the program is vastly interesting and a new approach in the field of art therapy. Take a look:

Jihad Rehab: Can Art Therapy Cure Terrorism?
Cathy Malchiodi
Created Dec 19 2008 - 7:38am

To some, the idea of art therapy as rehab in Riyadh sounds like a story that would headline The Onion. But art therapy is serious business at Saudi Arabia's experimental rehab center for former jihadists, some from the Guantanamo Bay detention center. From Jihad to Rehab, a PBS production featuring Canadian journalist Nancy Durham [1], offers a rare chance to see these detainees in treatment as they sit at long tables with pastels in hand, intensely engaged in the the art process.

My well-regarded colleague Dr. Awad Alyami is the detainees' art therapist and is one of the most passionate advocates for the transformative power of art in trauma recovery [2]that I know. Alyami, Director of Art Therapy at King Fahad Medical City, studied art therapy at Pennsylvania State University and has become a global voice for the use of art as therapy for what may be some of the most complex clients a therapist may see. In fact, initially he was reluctant and even a little frightened to undertake work with the detainees, even though he has extensive experience treating traumatic stress and mental illness. Once you see Alyami on film waving his arms in the air like an orchestra leader, motivating convicted jihadists to draw their feelings-- well, he is an intrepid and enthusiastic traveler into psychological terrain not often attempted.

Islamic law prohibits the depiction of people or animals in artwork so drawings are generally abstract, at times integrating text from the Koran or other sources. The calligraphy and depictions of sunrises and flowers do not really reflect the darker emotions confronted in treatment and are Jihad art therapyimages Western therapists might not expect to see. In fact, some might define the content of their artwork as being "in denial" of the crimes committed. With these individuals, it's the process of making art and Alyami's careful interventions to help these men examine the consequences of past actions and discussion of their art that are the core of their art therapy.

Interestingly, Dr. Alyami does not use the word "art" with his clients. He refers to what they're doing as "making things with your hands." The word "art" in Arabic doesn't mean only drawing or painting, it means dancing, singing, and other art forms and in many cases, "art" has a negative meaning in parts of Islamic society. In essence, these men are engaged in "making things with their hands" in order to put their anger out on paper rather than acting it out as terrorists.

Truth be told, there is more to this rehab program than just art therapy; there's religious instruction, psychological counseling, team sports, and other interventions. The goal is to help the detainees ultimately restart their lives, including marriage, new jobs, and buying a car. This is rehabilitation, Saudi style, and other countries are taking note of this model for addressing terrorism in therapy because the program addresses both theological issues as well as psychological needs of detainees. While long-term outcomes of the experiment remain to be seen, it's exciting to imagine that ultimately art may be, at least in part, a potent form of counterterrorism.

© 2008 Cathy Malchiodi

http://www.cathymalchiodi.com

Art Therapy in the Schools - Artistic License

This article was brought to my attention by a music teacher, which he saw in the National Education Association (NEA) magazine that highlighted the use of art therapy in the schools. When we were talking about our professions, he remembered reading this article and was kind enough to pass the magazine on to me (thanks, Russell!). Here is the article showing the growing importance of the use of art in schools with the ED/LD population. (click the link to download the PDF)

WikiHow: How to Use an Art Journal

I happened to see this WikiHow entry featured on the front of my Google search page and thought it was cool. I thought I'd have to share it here...for yourself or for your clients to use!

~~Click here to download PDF~~

Importance of Medical Art Therapy (and Arts in Health Care)

You Gotta Have Art
Patients Benefit From Creative Expression

By Carol Strickland
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; HE01

As health-care costs skyrocket, a down-to-earth approach to healing is emerging, complementing high-tech medicine with high-touch arts.

The approach is based on the assumption that incorporating music, visual art, writing and performance into clinical care can increase feelings of well-being and even improve health -- an assumption that medical researchers are beginning to recognize the need to test with evidence-based studies.

Growing belief in the healing value of the arts was on display last month at a symposium at New York's Museum of Modern Art titled "The Value and Importance of the Arts in Health Care." Participants -- physicians, hospital administrators and artists -- were as upbeat as if they were promoting a miracle drug: Integrating the arts into health care is in vogue, said Leonard Shlain, a laparoscopic surgeon in San Francisco, "because it works."

The Society for the Arts in Healthcare, which sponsored the symposium along with MoMA and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has seen its membership rise. As of 2006, the society estimated that more than half of 2,500 U.S. hospitals that were surveyed offer arts-based programs, said Anita Boles, the group's executive director.

Carol Herron coordinates an arts in medicine program at Texas Children's Cancer Center in Houston that involves visual artists, musicians, dancers, mimes, writers and puppeteers.

"We do children a disservice if all we do is treat the disease," she said. "We need to treat the whole child and the whole family."

And at New York University Medical Center, using art to reduce stress has become a priority, according to Marianne Hardart, director of creative arts therapies.

"There's not anyone it doesn't work with," she said, including adults, adolescents and younger children.

Not all institutions are willing to incorporate approaches of this kind, though, Hardart said. "In medical settings geared toward physical and chemical interventions, we're often considered an adjunct instead of an integrated piece."

That's partly because the research supporting these programs is slim.

Some of the documented benefits -- based largely on short-term appraisals of small numbers of patients -- include enhanced quality of life, patients' increased cooperation with painful procedures and helping staff understand a patient's point of view. Mounting evidence from the few early empirical studies also report reduced fatigue, depression, anxiety, pain and stress, which may boost the patient's immune system.

Letting Go of the Pain

Tracy Councill, who developed an art therapy program called Tracy's Kids at Georgetown University Medical Center's Lombardi Cancer Center, recalled an art project by an 11-year-old lymphoma patient who had been in isolation for months following painful bone marrow transplantation. When he came back as an outpatient, "he made a clay sculpture of a sarcophagus with a mummy-looking thing," she said, which he glazed "with a lot of red to look like blood." This grisly object, she explained, served as "a displaced way of putting that aggression for all the stuff he'd been through into art -- a good way for him to be finished and let go."

Artwork can help medical staff perceive fears that patients sometimes can't express verbally. Matthew Gerson, vice chairman of the board of the Prevent Cancer Foundation, which funds Tracy's Kids, described a 12-year-old patient awaiting bone marrow transplant who made a puppet he called Dr. Bones. In the course of dramatizing a story, the child revealed his terror that his own bones would be removed. The art therapist was able to correct the misconception.

As part of a rehab team at NYU, art therapist Alice Landry works with adults who have suffered brain or spinal cord injury. A project such as woodworking or jewelry, she says, "creates a metaphor for them rebuilding themselves." Her patients demonstrate not only emotional but functional gains. After four weeks, a multiple sclerosis patient who initially couldn't pick up a bead was stringing beads and adding clasps, she said.

Fabien Navidi-Kasmai, 15, diagnosed with a form of Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was 11, illustrated his five-day course of chemotherapy at Georgetown: "I drew a picture of me getting hit by a truck," he said in a phone interview, "then I'd get up and get hit by a train. I'd get up again and be hit by a plane. It really helps to get those feelings out on paper." The lure of the art studio made him drag himself out of bed. "Unless you've been through it," he said, "it's difficult to grasp the concept that art has the power to make having cancer a good experience."

Uplifted Spirits

Aziza Shad, medical director of the pediatric hematology oncology unit at Georgetown, said the facility was designed around its open art studio. "The focus of our clinic is the art therapy program."

As soon as they sign in and before blood is drawn, children race to the art table. They forget they've come for examination, as they laugh, chat, draw or do clay work. Shad believes strongly in the program's benefits: "Those children who participate in the art therapy program do so much better physically."

Karen Robinson, who lives in Washington and whose son Max was 5 when he received a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, found the Georgetown clinic welcoming: "We knew that this was home," she said. "It helped us mind, body and soul."

Another Tracy's Kids program has opened at the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children's National Medical Center. Max Coppes, executive director of the center, said that once the art studio was installed, children began grabbing their IV poles and rushing over to work on their projects. "My prediction is, this will become a huge success," he said.

Besides providing feel-good activity, the arts can enhance a hospital's physical environment. Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston spent more than $1 million to spruce up a 200-foot-long hallway its patients used when going to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute for treatment.

Estrellita Karsh, who originated the project (she is a former medical writer and the widow of the famed photographer Yousuf Karsh), said the passage used to be "traversed by very depressed-looking people, hunched over with their shoulders down." After installing a mural of 149 birds carrying medicinal sprigs, the corridor was renamed "the Bridge of Hope." "Nobody," Karsh said, "goes through with their head down now." One 3-year-old girl, bald from chemotherapy, used to be prodded along to her treatments. Now, the girl points to "her" bird, a scarlet ibis, and talks to it: "Are you a good girl?"

"There's no question there are numerous facets to caring and healing, and the physical environment is a critical one," said psychiatrist Gary Gottlieb, Brigham's president. "It has been shown that people's optimism, their mental outlook and their mood affect outcome in the treatment of chronic diseases and a number of cancers."

Anecdotes and Evidence

Some educators are schooling medical students not only in the art of medicine but also in the broader arts: drawing, art history and poetry. Edith Langner, faculty director of the Arts in Medicine Project at Columbia University Medical Center, takes second-year med students to MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she hones their observational skills. Looking at portraits trains the students to examine patients' faces, she says.

Yet resistance persists. Many doubt the humanities belong in medical education, and when they are included they're often marginalized rather than fully embraced. The field of art and health care, as William J. Ivey, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, put it, is "anecdote-rich and evidence-poor."

"If, on scientific examination," Ivey said, "our anecdotes and intuitions turn out to be correct, we can then -- with the evidence required -- move forward in policy areas."

Even a physician such as Coppes, who is convinced of the value of art therapy, explains, "I'm an academic, so if something is not demonstrated in a double-blind, randomized study, it doesn't exist."

Karsh, the medical writer, remains adamant in her faith: "Anecdotal accounts always seem to precede scientific corroboration," she said. ·

Carol Strickland is an art critic and medical writer based in New York. Comments:health@washpost.com.

Art Therapy Outcome Studies

Here is a great resource to help undergird the importance of art therapy. This listing provides information of art therapy outcome and single subject studies that can help with research, grants, effects, and support for art therapy. Some topics included are ADD/ADHD, Asperger's, Geriatrics, Grief, Chemical Dependence, PTSD, Abuse, School, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and Developmental Delay.

Art Therapy: Tree Drawings

I came across this video of a person who video blogged their art journal of tree drawings over a period of time. I found this particularly interesting, especially since my art therapy master's thesis was about self-identity and self-concept as shown through tree drawings.

Art Therapy in the Netherlands

Speaking of global art therapy, here is a nice clip of several interviews with Dutch art therapists sharing about their passion about the profession: