Art Therapy: Creative Treatment for Children in Crisis

COWETA ARTS

Written by ROBIN STEWART

Sometimes art is where you least expect it.

Newnan’s Pathways Center serves the community’s mental health needs with their Hospital Road campus home to the Child and Adolescent Unit. When admitted, kids may live there for one week.

“Pathways Center in Newnan serves children in crisis related to mental health,” says Abigail Alvarez, client events coordinator. “That spans from anxiety to suicidal thoughts.”

Pathways opened July 2019. Alvarez came onboard in May 2020 and helped flesh out their creative program by giving existing arts and crafts time more structure and creating an art therapy program for resident clients. A child’s stay at Pathways is structured and supervised by design. The road to recovery includes creativity, in some form, every day.

Serving boys and girls from 5 to 17, Pathways provides art instruction that offers them a way to express their feelings. Behavioral support technicians and activities associates at Pathways view art as a way to reach children on another level. It becomes a conversation starter. Visual and performing arts introduce children to new forms of expression. And it also does something a bit more powerful.

“The idea of art therapy is to help the child connect to an activity, an action they can deploy to help them in the future,” says Alvarez. She calls art therapy a “coping skill they can take home.” The goal is for children to leave Pathways armed with tools to cope with future crises on their own.

Clients participate in many forms of therapeutic creativity. Regular activities include making stress balls out of balloons, crafting dreamcatchers, writing positive self-affirmations on cut-outs representing themselves, and fashioning vision boards using magazine clippings. Alvarez calls the vision board an “expressive exercise” which shows both short- and long-term goals while inviting discussion on actions the child needs to take in order to achieve them.

Kids also make coping kits by decorating boxes to resemble a band aid kit. One side is labeled with an issue, anger for example. The opposite side is labeled with the coping skill or “band aid” for the problem. In the case of anger, “a walk in fresh air” might be the band aid of choice.

Music, instruments and video with dance are among the art therapy options. Journaling, drawing and coloring are also creative outlets for the children.

Pathways also offers structured visual arts time. They partner with Jenny Jones, artist and owner of Corner Arts Gallery in downtown Newnan, to bring art classes to their clients. Twice a month, Jones teaches a live, masked, socially distanced painting class.

“We just paint,” says Jones. “It’s a nice, quiet time for the children to take their minds off of whatever’s going on in their lives.” Jones says that painting is one way for the children to learn to express themselves. A typical class has from eight to 16 students who, in one hour, create an 8x10 acrylic-on-canvas painting. Jones leads the class and paints with the kids, teaching how to mix colors, which paint brushes to use, and different brushstrokes. She has a finished painting on display.

According to Jones, there’s a mix of first-timers and those who have painted. Some follow along; others go freeform, tapping into their personal creativity. Step by step, they receive instruction, and at the end of the session each child has his or her own personal masterpiece.

“It’s fun to watch,” says Jones. “Many do well... I think it was Pablo Picasso who said, ‘Art washes away the dust in your soul.’ It’s true. It allows you to take a breath and disconnect from worry. Enjoying the arts helps you turn a corner in your life.”

“I think it was Pablo Picasso who said, ‘Art washes away the dust in your soul.’ It’s true. It allows you to take a breath and disconnect from worry. Enjoying the arts helps you turn a corner in your life.”

-Jenny Jones

Jenny Jones, of Corner Arts Gallery, teaches painting classes for children as art therapy. Their creations are shared here.

The performing arts also have a place in the Pathways art therapy curriculum. Mary Caroline Moore, director of Newnan Theatre Company (NTC), brings volunteers to visit Pathways two or three times a month, delivering a lively dose of performing arts to the residents.

“We were excited about joining Pathways when Abigail (Alvarez) approached us with the idea,” Moore says. COVID-19 put the kibosh on things they might usually do, like singing or speaking loudly. Instead, NTC got creative with an idea volunteer Faith Farrell had seen at other theatre companies. They called it “Play in an Hour.”

Volunteers with Newnan Theatre Company share the art of drama with young therapy patients.

To create a play in an hour, kids supply two different nouns, prepositions and so forth. The combination the group likes best becomes the last sentence of the play, or, how the play ends: “That’s how the shark was over the underwear,” for example. Next, the young thespians-to-be go around the room, starting with the standard “Once upon a time,” then adding sentences and characters and using props and costumes supplied by NTC to compose a storyline. A quick rehearsal is followed by a performance.

“They seem to enjoy it very much,” says Moore. “It gets crazy, silly, ridiculous, and is lots of fun.”

Most of the children have no previous performing arts experience, but this live version of “Mad Libs” is popular nonetheless. Moore points out how language arts are also part of the creativity as nouns, prepositions and adjectives are defined during the process. Additional benefits include helping youth learn participation skills and how to deal with disappointment, such as not getting a desired role, while gaining a sense of accomplishment when the production wraps, according to Moore.

“It’s a confidence booster and good for the ego for the child to be able to say, ‘I wrote and performed in a play,’” Moore notes. “We hope perhaps we’re expanding their horizons and showing them arts are fun and can be an escape.”

It’s been said that art heals. The professionals, painters, performers and patients at Pathways agree.

NCM